Attorneys for the family of one of the victims killed in last year's mass shooting at Florida State University have officially announced a federal lawsuit. They're taking the chatbot company OpenAI to court.
Tiru Chabba was one of two people killed in the shooting on FSU's campus. Bakari Sellers is one of the attorneys representing Chabba's family.
"We are not going to allow the American public to have clinical trials run on them by open AI and chat GPT," he said.
During the announcement for the lawsuit, Sellers said the accused gunman used ChatGPT, an AI chatbot owned by OpenAI, to get advice on how to carry out his actions.
"ChatGPT has decided they wanted to place revenue streams, they decided they wanted to place income, they decided they wanted to place the dollar above the lives of everyday, average Americans," he said.
READ MORE: What to know about how the suspect in the killing of 2 USF students used ChatGPT
Sellers said logs show the suspect asked the chatbot about what firearms to use and about the best way to get media attention from the school shooting.
Amy Willbanks, another attorney representing Chabba's family, said those questions setting off no warning signs within the AI system is a core element of the suit.
"All of these plans that he had and the things that he was interested in and his mental state, a human would have escalated it to another human to make sure that somebody was checking on him," she said. "That did not happen here because of the nature of this product."
When asked about the lawsuit, OpenAI spokesperson Drew Pusateri said the company is not responsible for the shooting.
"In this case, ChatGPT provided factual responses to questions with information that could be found broadly across public sources on the internet, and it did not encourage or promote illegal or harmful activity. ChatGPT is a general-purpose tool used by hundreds of millions of people every day for legitimate purposes. We work continuously to strengthen our safeguards to detect harmful intent, limit misuse, and respond appropriately when safety risks arise," Pusateri said.
Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier is also currently conducting a criminal investigation into OpenAI for the company's involvement in the shooting.
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