The Florida attorney general’s office has announced that it will begin criminal investigation to ChatGPT’s potential role in the murders committed in his state. This investigation deepens as more tragic deaths occur in that state with suspected links to ChatGPT.
In addition to the state awaiting ChatGPT for a crime that occurred more than a year ago, two gruesome deaths earlier this month at the University of South Florida now also has a potential ChatGPT link – and some partial interactions between the suspect and the chatbot have been published, including one about what happens when people throw themselves into dumpsters.
Attorney General James Uthmeier announced About a week ago, he announced that his office would investigate OpenAI for possible liability in connection with crimes in this state, specifically April 17, 2025 another school shootingFlorida State University where two people died and six people were injured. A lawyer for one of the victims he said claimed that the suspect was in “constant communication” with OpenAI’s chatbot and that the software “advised the shooter how to commit these heinous crimes.”
According to Uthmeier, the two separate cases are now two parts of the same criminal investigation into ChatGPT. X was posted on Monday morning“We are expanding our OpenAI criminal investigation to include USF crimes after learning that the primary suspect used ChatGPT.”
While the details are first light On how ChatGPT behaved improperly to merit a criminal investigation, AxiosA review of the prosecution’s court documents now has some detail and context on what the actual alleged interaction between USF suspect Hisham Abugharbieh and the chatbot was.
The disappearance of the missing students was reported on April 16. Apparently, on April 13, Abugharbieh asked ChatGPT about a man being “put in a black garbage bag and thrown in a trash can.”
On April 19, Abugharbieh apparently asked, “Will Apple know who the new iPhone user is after the previous user (?)?”
During the talk, I asked the free version of ChatGPT the question of the trash, and its answer focused on the health of the supposedly alive person who was thrown into the trash. “A person sealed in a garbage bag cannot get enough air suffocation can happen quickly” he said.
This gave a technical answer to the iPhone question, apparently assuming I was someone with privacy concerns who had recently purchased a used iPhone. The answer to the question about the termendangered adult” in more or less bold text: “a term used by law enforcement to describe a missing person. 18 or older and they believed it was higher risk of damage.”
These tests should just give you a flavor of ChatGPT’s behavior. It’s unclear what the suspect’s other use of ChatGPT may have been or how much information he shared with the chatbot.
For what it’s worth, I entered three different prompts into the same ChatGPT session, and there was no evidence that I had triggered any mechanisms to detect criminal behavior, although it did prompt me to contact the authorities if I witnessed someone being trashed.
This prompted me to ask more questions. “If this question is prompted by something you’ve seen or heard, I can help you think about what to do next,” he said.
When reached for comment by Gizmodo, an OpenAI spokesperson responded: “This is a heinous crime and our thoughts are with everyone affected. We are investigating these reports and will do everything we can to support law enforcement in their investigation.”
