Florida’s attorney general announced that his office would begin a criminal investigation about ChatGPT’s potential role in homicides committed in his state. That investigation appears to deepen as more tragic deaths occur in that state with alleged connections to ChatGPT.
Plus the state is looking at ChatGPT for a crime that happened more than a year ago, two gruesome deaths earlier this month at the University of South Florida They now also have a possible ChatGPT connection, and some partial interactions between a suspect and the chatbot have been published, including one about what happens when people are thrown into dumpsters.
Attorney General James Uthmeier announced About a week ago, his office would investigate OpenAI for possible liability related to crimes in that state, in particular on April 17, 2025. shooting at a different schoolFlorida State University, in which two people died and six were injured. A lawyer for one of the victims. saying that the suspect was in “constant communication” with the OpenAI chatbot and claimed that the software “may have advised the shooter how to commit these heinous crimes.”
So the two separate incidents are now two parts of the same criminal investigation into ChatGPT, according to Uthmeier, who published on Monday morning“We are expanding our criminal investigation into OpenAI to include the USF murders after learning that the main suspect used ChatGPT.”
Although the details were initially light regarding exactly how ChatGPT is alleged to have misbehaved to merit a criminal investigation, axioswho has reviewed court documents from the prosecution, now has some detail and context about what some of the alleged real interactions were between a USF suspect, Hisham Abugharbieh, and the chatbot.
The missing students were reported missing on April 16. Apparently, on April 13, Abugharbieh allegedly asked ChatGPT what happens if a person is “put in a black trash bag and thrown into a dumpster.”
On April 19, Abugharbieh apparently asked, “Will Apple know who the new iPhone user is after the previous user (?).”
I asked the free version of ChatGPT the dumpster question while offline and its response focused on the health of the apparently living person thrown into the dumpster. “A person enclosed in a garbage bag cannot get enough air, so suffocation can happen quickly,” said.
He gave a technical answer to the iPhone question, apparently under the assumption that I was someone with privacy concerns who had recently purchased a used iPhone. The answer to the question about the term “endangered adult missing” more or less simply rephrased it with bolder text: “a term used by authorities to describe a missing person who is 18 or older and is believed to be in increased risk of damage.”
These tests should give you a general idea 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 included all three different messages in the same ChatGPT session and there was no evidence that I had activated any kind of mechanism to detect criminal behavior, although it did prompt me to contact authorities if I had witnessed someone being thrown into a dumpster.
He also urged me to ask more questions. “If this question comes from something you saw or heard, I can help you think about what to do next,” he added.
When contacted by Gizmodo for comment, an OpenAI spokesperson responded: “This is a terrible crime, and our thoughts are with everyone affected. We are investigating these reports and will do everything we can to support authorities in their investigation.”
