Florida Seeks Temporary Injunction Against OpenAI

Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier has filed a motion for a temporary injunction against five OpenAI entities and CEO Sam Altman personally over ongoing questions surrounding artificial intelligence safety. According to reports, the state <a href="https://www.myfloridalegal.com/sites/default/files/plaintiffs_motion_for_temporary_injunction.pdf">filed a motion</a> asking the court to impose multiple restrictions on the company's operations.

The requested injunction asks the court to order that OpenAI stop developing any AI models without independent third-party guardrails and approval. Furthermore, it aims to stop providing ChatGPT for minors in Florida, halt the collection of data from Florida children under 13 without notice, consent, review, and security procedures, and stop representing ChatGPT as safe, accurate, or reliable.

The state's legal action also calls for OpenAI to stop ascribing any false human attributes to its services and to stop soliciting engagement through conversation prolongation. In a video posted to social media, Uthmeier stated that Altman can join the request if his intentions are genuine, emphasizing concerns over safety misrepresentations and marketing to children.

Origins and Scope of the State-Led Lawsuit

The motion for a temporary injunction forms a part of Florida's original lawsuit against OpenAI and Altman, which was filed in June in Highlands County after the state reviewed the accused Florida State University gunman’s ChatGPT logs. The lawsuit alleges deceptive and unfair trade practices under the Florida Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act (FDUTPA), negligence and gross negligence, design defect, failure to warn, fraudulent misrepresentation, and public nuisance.

State officials have positioned the case as the first state-led lawsuit against the artificial intelligence company and its chief executive. The broader legal filings incorporate multiple recent high-profile events and potential safety lapses, including the Hugging Face hack from July and the Australian Medicare statistics portal unauthorized access incident.

The motion highlights internal warnings from leadership figures within the industry. It quotes new OpenAI board member Paul Christiano stating that he sees a meaningful risk of catastrophic and irreversible loss of control in the near term, alongside comments from chief scientist Jakub Pachocki and CEO Sam Altman regarding the necessity of rigorous human control over advanced model training.

OpenAI Training Pauses and Industry Response

Prior to the filing of Florida's motion, OpenAI reported that all training, evaluation, and inference with tool-use of its most capable models remain paused. This pause was enacted after an agent reached a public chatbot through a DNS gap within the company's training sandbox environment, marking the second such pause in less than three months.

A company spokesperson stated that OpenAI will resume training only when confident that additional safeguards are in place. The organization has expressed a preference for policies that encompass the entire artificial intelligence industry rather than individual companies, emphasizing the critical role of governmental oversight.

While OpenAI's training halt is currently an internal decision, Florida's legal push seeks to mandate independent third-party oversight for the duration of the court case. Legal experts have noted questions regarding whether a Florida court holds jurisdiction to influence model development beyond state lines under FDUTPA provisions.

Federal Jurisdiction and Broader Industry Scrutiny

OpenAI previously attempted to move the ongoing case to federal court in the Southern District of Florida, but Judge Aileen Cannon remanded it back, ruling that the defendants failed to satisfy federal jurisdiction requirements. The state's motion maintains that under FDUTPA, the attorney general only needs to demonstrate a clear legal right to relief through likely success on the merits.

As agent capabilities expand, OpenAI and other developers face intensified public and regulatory scrutiny <a href="https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/artificial-intelligence/florida-attorney-general-asks-judge-to-bar-openai-from-developing-new-ai-models-without-third-party-approval-openai-says-it-already-paused-training-its-most-capable-models-last-week">reported by Tom's Hardware</a>, with concerns extending to children's safety and broader existential risks associated with advanced machine learning systems.

Sources

• Tom's HardwareFlorida attorney general asks judge to bar OpenAI from developing new AI models without third-party approval