Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier today said that the state has opened a criminal investigation into ChatGPT and its parent company, OpenAI Group PBC, over whether the company bears any criminal responsibility for a shooting that happened last year at Florida State University.

Last month, Uthmeier announced that his office would open a probe into OpenAI over a number of concerns including alleged harm to children, threats to national security, and also the shooting in which 20-year-old student Phoenix Ikner killed two people and injured six more after discussing such a crime with ChatGPT.

Ikner had asked the chatbot various questions, including about how the U.S. would react to a shooting and which parts of the university would be busiest at a certain time of day. Some of the other queries were said to have related to advice on weapons and ammunition.

“If this were a person on the other end of the screen, we would be charging them with murder,” Uthmeier said. “Just because this is a chatbot, an AI, does not mean that there is not criminal culpability. So, we’re going to look at who knew what, designed what or should have done more.”

Issuing subpoenas to OpenAI is an escalation, reportedly partly at the behest of the family of Robert Morales, one of the people who died in the shooting. The family’s lawyers have claimed Ikner was in “constant communication with ChatGPT” before he pulled the trigger, and that ChatGPT might have “advised” him on “how to commit these heinous crimes.”

“We have been looking into the recent FSU shooting, and that shooter’s communications with ChatGPT,” Uthmeier said in a press conference this morning. “Our review of that communication has revealed that a criminal investigation is necessary.”

Uthmeier’s office will now seek information about OpenAI’s policies andinternal training materials and how the company cooperates with law enforcement agencies. The investigation will determine whether “human beings may have been involved in the design, management and operation” of ChatGPT to possibly “warrant criminal liability.”

A spokesperson for OpenAI said in a statement to NBC News that the shooting was a “tragedy, but ChatGPT is not responsible for this terrible crime.” She added that the chatbot only responded with advice that is available “broadly across public sources on the internet,” and that it didn’t “encourage or promote illegal or harmful activity.”

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