Florida Attorney General Files Landmark Lawsuit Against OpenAI and CEO Sam Altman

Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier filed a sweeping consumer protection lawsuit against OpenAI and its CEO Sam Altman in Leon County Circuit Court on Tuesday, alleging deceptive trade practices, data privacy violations, and the unauthorized use of copyrighted materials in training the company's GPT models. The lawsuit, the first of its kind brought by a U.S. state against a frontier AI company, seeks hundreds of millions of dollars in civil penalties and sweeping injunctive relief.

The 94-page complaint alleges that OpenAI misled consumers about the capabilities and limitations of ChatGPT, failed to adequately protect user data — including data from minors — and trained its models on copyrighted works without consent or compensation. The lawsuit draws on Florida's Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act (FDUTPA), which carries penalties of up to $10,000 per violation.

Core Allegations

Central to the lawsuit is the claim that OpenAI trained its models on "millions of copyrighted works by Florida authors and publishers" without authorization, constituting an unfair business practice that harmed Florida's creative economy. The complaint also alleges that ChatGPT has generated defamatory content about identifiable Florida residents, and that OpenAI's data collection practices violated Florida's privacy laws by gathering information from minors without parental consent.

The filing further accuses OpenAI of making false claims about ChatGPT's reliability and safety, pointing to multiple documented instances of "hallucinations" that the company allegedly knew about but failed to adequately disclose to consumers. The lawsuit seeks to force OpenAI to implement mandatory fact-checking systems before generating responses and to clearly label all AI-generated outputs.

Broader Implications

Legal experts say the Florida lawsuit could open the floodgates for similar actions by other state attorneys general. At least twelve additional states are reportedly considering analogous filings, which together could reshape the regulatory landscape for AI companies operating in the United States. The lawsuit's focus on copyright training data also aligns with ongoing federal litigation and legislative proposals.

"This lawsuit isn't just about Florida. It's a test case for whether state consumer protection laws can fill the federal regulatory vacuum around artificial intelligence." — Law professor specializing in technology regulation

OpenAI issued a brief statement calling the lawsuit "without merit" and asserting that its practices comply with all applicable laws. Sam Altman has not personally commented. A preliminary hearing is expected within 60 days.

Source: Florida Attorney General's Office, The New York Times, Reuters, and Ars Technica.