TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (WCTV) – Another victim of the Florida State University shooting last year is suing OpenAI and its co-founder, Samuel Altman, for its role in the deadly shooting.<\/p>\n
This suit follows a slew of lawsuits against the artificial intelligence company after the family of a fatal victim of the FSU shooting filed a lawsuit in April, claiming the suspected gunman, Phoenix Ikner, was aided by ChatGPT. <\/p>\n
The victim, who the suit says was struck by three bullets during the shooting, claims ChatGPT was \u201can active participant\u201d in Ikner\u2019s plan, citing his communication with the chatbot for nearly a year before the shooting. The suit details Ikner\u2019s conversations with the bot<\/a>, noting his feelings of social isolation, suicidal ideology and questions about weapons and mass causalities.<\/p>\n The lawsuit asserts the memory system built into ChatGPT is \u201cdesigned to know its users better than any human could\u201d and the program failed to flag Ikner as a risk. <\/p>\n Altman, \u201cknowing accelerated\u201d the launch of ChatGPT without following through safety protocols, according to the lawsuit. <\/p>\n The suit claims Altman rushed the launch of the program to beat Google, which was launching an updated version of Gemini. <\/p>\n Notably, the lawsuit mentions ChatGPT was designed to \u201cassume best intentions,\u201d which tells the chatbot to interpret ambiguous questions charitably, even if the question raised safety concerns.<\/p>\n Ikner is accused of openly firing on FSU\u2019s campus<\/a> on April 17 last year, killing two people and injuring multiple others. His trial is scheduled for Oct. 19. <\/p>\n An OpenAI spokesperson said that ChatGPT encouraged Ikner to seek real-world support multiple times and that OpenAI has advanced safety systems in place help detect and respond to risks of harm.<\/p>\n \u201cLast year\u2019s mass shooting at Florida State University was a tragedy, but ChatGPT is not responsible for this terrible crime. After learning of the incident, we identified an account believed to be associated with the suspect and proactively shared this information with law enforcement. We continue to cooperate with authorities. 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.\u201d <\/p>\n To keep up with the latest news as it develops, follow WCTV on Facebook<\/a>, Instagram<\/a>, YouTube<\/a>, Nextdoor<\/a> <\/a>and X<\/a> (Twitter<\/a>).<\/p>\n Have a news tip or see an error? Write to us here<\/a>. Please include the article\u2019s headline in your message.<\/p>\n Be the first to see all the biggest headlines by downloading the WCTV News app. Click here<\/a> to get started.<\/p>\n Copyright 2026 WCTV. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n