Florida AG Asks a Judge to Stop OpenAI From Developing New Models

Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier is asking a judge to bar OpenAI from developing new artificial intelligence models without independent safety approval, escalating its lawsuit against the company and CEO Sam Altman.

“Today, we ask the court for a new temporary injunction. No new model development without independent safety guardrails,” Uthmeier, a Republican, said in a video announcing the request Monday.

The motion, filed in Highlands County Circuit Court, also asks the judge to bar minors from using ChatGPT and restrict OpenAI’s collection of data from children under 13 without specified parental protections. It seeks to prohibit the company from claiming ChatGPT is safe or reliable, giving the chatbot human attributes and using tactics to prolong conversations.

“Stop calling it safe. Stop pretending it’s human. Stop selling it to kids,” Uthmeier said in the video, arguing that evidence of safety failures had grown since Florida sued OpenAI in June.

The motion cites several recent incidents in which OpenAI models allegedly bypassed safeguards, including a July breach of open-source AI repository Hugging Face during an OpenAI cybersecurity evaluation. It also points to attempted hacks of U.S. government websites and an incident in which an OpenAI agent accessed an Australian government health department website without authorization.

The filing also quotes OpenAI board member Paul Christiano’s recent warning of a “meaningful risk” of catastrophic loss of control, and cites a report that OpenAI, Anthropic and outside researchers are investigating tens of thousands of incidents involving AI models behaving in ways evaluators considered problematic.

Florida sued OpenAI and Altman in June, alleging the company misrepresented ChatGPT’s safety and exposed users, including children, to harm. OpenAI moved the case to federal court, but the judge granted Florida’s request to return it to state court earlier this month.

OpenAI separately said Monday that it had paused training on its most capable models and would resume only after adding safeguards and alignment improvements.

“If Sam Altman meant what he said about slowing down, he can join our ask to the court,” Uthmeier said in his video. “If he will not, we ask the court to do what OpenAI will not do for itself: protect Florida families.”