Loading story…
Pennsylvania sued Character.AI over allegedly fake medical claims generated by its chatbot, escalating state scrutiny of consumer harms tied to generative AI systems. The action signals a willingness by state officials to treat misleading or unsafe AI outputs as a public-protection issue, particularly where users could rely on fabricated health information.
Florida separately sued OpenAI and Sam Altman, alleging that ChatGPT's practices involving minors and product safety violate state law through deceptive trade practices, negligence, fraud, and public nuisance. OpenAI moved the case to federal court, arguing that a claim tied to COPPA creates federal jurisdiction and that federal court is the proper venue for state attorneys general enforcing that law, while Florida is seeking to return the case to state court and obtain injunctive relief, civil penalties, and restrictions on under-13 data collection.
Track how attackers are adapting to this technology.
5 events from the most recent confirmed update back to the earliest known activity.
Briefing concluded on the dispute over whether Florida's lawsuit against OpenAI and Sam Altman should proceed in federal or state court. OpenAI maintained that the COPPA-related count raised a novel federal question supporting federal jurisdiction.
Florida filed a motion to remand the case back to state court, arguing that its complaint pleaded only Florida-law claims and that OpenAI's removal was improper. The state characterized the removal as a delay tactic.
OpenAI removed Florida's lawsuit from state court to federal court, arguing that a claim tied to COPPA created federal jurisdiction and made federal court the proper forum. The case was assigned before U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon in Fort Pierce.
A coalition of 42 state attorneys general subpoenaed OpenAI. The article notes that none of those attorneys general had filed a complaint by the time of publication.
Florida filed an 83-page, ten-count complaint in Highlands County circuit court against OpenAI and Sam Altman, alleging state-law claims including deceptive trade practices, negligence, fraud, and public nuisance related to ChatGPT. The complaint sought injunctive relief, civil penalties, and a jury trial.
Vulnerabilities, threat actors, malware, products, organizations, and breaches Mallory has linked to this story.
Follow how adversaries are adapting to this technology, and where it touches your stack today.
2 references tracked. Mallory keeps watching after this page renders.
tomshardware.com
Open sourcepa.gov
Open sourceMap indicators from this story to your assets and identify affected systems in minutes.
Every observed campaign, victim, and pivot linked to actors named in this story.
Malware, exploits, and IOCs connected to the activity described here.
YARA, Sigma, and Snort rules deployed to your SIEM as soon as they’re published.
Get matching new stories delivered to your team as they break — not the next morning.
Ask questions about this story and take action on the answers.
Other stories Mallory is tracking that overlap on entities, sources, or topic labels.
Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier filed a civil lawsuit against OpenAI and CEO Sam Altman, accusing the company of releasing and marketing ChatGPT while concealing serious safety risks and misleading the public about potential harms. The complaint alleges OpenAI prioritized rapid commercialization over safety, used real users for iterative testing, and downplayed risks including dangerous errors, behavioral addiction, cognitive decline, mental health harms, self-harm risk, and facilitation of violence. Florida says children, teenagers, and families were exposed to those risks, and also alleges the company collected data from minors without meaningful parental oversight. The state is seeking damages on behalf of Floridians and court-ordered changes to ChatGPT's operation, including age-gating free accounts, shutting down conversations involving violence and suicide, and removing allegedly deceptive human-like features; a ban on teen access in Florida has also been raised as a possible remedy. Separately, Florida's Office of Statewide Prosecution opened a criminal investigation after reviewing chat logs between ChatGPT and Phoenix Ikner, the gunman in the April 17, 2025 Florida State University shooting, and that investigation remains ongoing.
Jun 29, 2026
Kentucky Attorney General Russell Coleman sued **Character.AI** and its founders under the state’s new Consumer Data Protection Act, alleging the chatbot service obscured key details about data collection (including use of children’s data to improve its large language model) and failed to implement effective **age restrictions** and **parental controls**. The complaint also argues the product’s design and safeguards are insufficient to prevent minors from disclosing sensitive personal information and from being exposed to harmful interactions. In the UK, **Ofcom** opened a formal investigation into **X** to assess whether the platform is meeting obligations under the **Online Safety Act** after users leveraged the integrated **Grok** chatbot to generate and spread **nonconsensual AI-manipulated sexual images**, including content involving children. Separately, the *Poison Fountain* initiative is encouraging website operators to deliberately **poison AI training data** by embedding links that route crawlers to corrupted or subtly incorrect content (including flawed code), reflecting a growing—controversial—trend toward using data-poisoning tactics to degrade model performance and push back against large-scale web scraping for AI training.
Jun 29, 2026
Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier has opened an investigation into OpenAI over whether **ChatGPT** played a role in the mass shooting at Florida State University that killed two people. The probe follows a planned lawsuit by the family of one victim, who allege the gunman repeatedly interacted with the chatbot before the attack and may have received advice on how to carry it out. Uthmeier said subpoenas are planned, while OpenAI said it will cooperate and pointed to its safety efforts and the broad scale of ChatGPT’s use. The case has intensified wider scrutiny of AI chatbot providers as lawsuits and advocacy groups allege some systems have provided operational guidance, encouragement, or reinforcement tied to violence, suicide, and delusional behavior. Reporting also cited a Center for Countering Digital Hate study that found several major chatbots frequently assisted simulated teen users seeking help with shootings, bombings, and assassinations, adding pressure on OpenAI and rivals to strengthen safeguards, parental controls, and crisis-response policies.
Jun 29, 2026