OpenAI fights Florida over naming ChatGPT and Altman a public nuisance
The future of artificial intelligence isn’t just being coded; it’s being litigated. Florida’s high-profile lawsuit against OpenAI and CEO Sam Altman has entered a tense legal limbo, currently sitting before U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon in Fort Pierce, stalled for seven weeks over a critical jurisdictional question.
The state initiated the action in Highlands County circuit court, filing an extensive eight-page, ten-count complaint that pleaded strictly under Florida law, naming Altman personally, and seeking a jury verdict. At the heart of the dispute is the fundamental question of where this massive technological conflict belongs: state court or federal court?
OpenAI quickly moved the action to federal court, arguing that one of the claims, rooted in the federal Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), pulled the entire case firmly into federal jurisdiction. The state, meanwhile, sought a court ruling that the existence and distribution of ChatGPT constituted a public nuisance.
Among the specific allegations, the state claimed that OpenAI violated the Florida Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act by collecting data from minors without the necessary parental notice and consent required by COPPA rules. The complaint also detailed concerns about the default settings for ChatGPT’s memory feature, the absence of an age gate on the free tier, and the compressed safety evaluations for GPT-4o.
OpenAI’s defense centered on the principle of federal law, asserting that applying COPPA to artificial intelligence research was a novel federal question. They pointed to precedents set by state-level lawsuits against other platforms, such as those involving Meta, TikTok, and Discord, arguing that federal judges had previously declined to award fees because removal was not objectively unreasonable.
Despite the arguments, the lawsuit remains intensely focused on accountability. The complaint also leveled charges of negligence, gross negligence, fraudulent misrepresentation, and failure to warn. Furthermore, the legal record surrounding the case has touched upon internal company dynamics, referencing testimony that painted a picture of a toxic culture of lying within the organization.
The stakes couldn’t be higher. The state is seeking a permanent injunction to halt the collection of under-13 data and demands civil penalties—up to $10,000 per willful violation—which is double the penalty awarded in New Mexico, highlighting the significant difference in regulatory approach.
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