In the motion filed Monday, Uthmeier wrote Sam Altman's own words into the legal argument: "This is a rare instance where the defendant has publicly endorsed the very injunction being sought." The line comes from the emergency motion Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier filed against OpenAI, seeking a state court order to stop the company from continuing to train new models without independent safety oversight.
In a video posted to X on Monday, Uthmeier laid out his specific demands: "No more new model development without independent safety safeguards. No more collecting children's data. No more claiming this product is safe, accurate, or reliable. No more pretending it's human. No more using tactics designed to keep users engaged in conversation to a dangerous degree." He called on Altman directly: if Altman truly believes in slowing down, he should join this request to the court; if not, the court will do what OpenAI should have done itself — protect Florida families.
This lawsuit didn't come out of nowhere. The Florida Attorney General's office launched a criminal investigation into OpenAI back in April, triggered by a 2025 shooting at Florida State University (FSU) in which the suspect had reportedly used ChatGPT before the attack. The office formally sued OpenAI in June, and this week's emergency motion marks the latest development in that case.
In the motion, Uthmeier cited OpenAI's recent security disclosures — including a hack on Hugging Face — along with Altman's own repeated public calls for the AI industry to slow down frontier model development, as grounds for the injunction. "They've already asked the government to tie them to the mast," Uthmeier wrote in the filing. "The Florida Attorney General is now answering your distress signal, seeking an injunction so you can stop harming Floridians with this reckless, overly risky product."
OpenAI has not yet responded to Engadget's request for comment on this matter. Previously, after the criminal investigation was announced, the company stated: "The shooting at Florida State University last year was a tragedy, but ChatGPT is not responsible for this horrific crime... ChatGPT is a general-purpose tool used by hundreds of millions of people every day for legitimate purposes, and we continue to strengthen safeguards to detect harmful intent, limit misuse, and respond appropriately when safety risks arise."
This isn't the first time OpenAI has been linked to a mass shooting. Back in February, Canadian regulators asked OpenAI to change how it handles threats of harm, after a Wall Street Journal report revealed the company had flagged the account of Jesse Van Rootselaar, the suspect in the Tumbler Ridge shooting, in 2025 but failed to report the threat to law enforcement. Following the incident, OpenAI agreed to establish a new cooperation policy with Canadian law enforcement.
