Florida wants outside oversight before OpenAI's next model

Florida's attorney general wants a judge to put an outside check on how OpenAI builds its models, and not only on how ChatGPT behaves, Reuters reported. On Monday, James Uthmeier asked the court to bar OpenAI from developing new AI models without outside oversight as part of the state's child-harm lawsuit.

At a glance

• Uthmeier's motion also asks the court to order OpenAI to keep minors off ChatGPT and to stop giving the chat platform what Reuters describes as "human attributes."
• The request is a motion for a temporary injunction. That is a court order that would bind OpenAI while the case is underway, before any verdict. It builds on the lawsuit Florida filed in June.
• The state's core claims remain unproven allegations. They include information given to school shooters, self-harm guidance and addicting young users. Reuters does not say whether a hearing on the motion has been set.

In case you missed the first round, Florida sued OpenAI in June. The state alleges that OpenAI misrepresented how safe ChatGPT is and that the platform harmed children. Other governments have gone to court too. AI Tech Daily has followed a related Canadian case in which British Columbia sued OpenAI over the Tumbler Ridge shooting.

Uthmeier's motion asks for three restrictions, and the first one targets model development

The main request is the oversight gate. According to Reuters, Uthmeier asked the judge on Monday to bar OpenAI from developing new artificial intelligence models unless outside oversight is in place. The motion itself was posted as a PDF on the Florida attorney general's website.

The other two requests deal with the product young users actually see. Reuters said Uthmeier asked the court to order OpenAI to keep minors off ChatGPT and to bar the company from giving its chat platform "human attributes." AI Tech Daily notes that, together with the oversight gate, the package would limit how OpenAI builds ChatGPT and how it presents it to young users while the suit proceeds.

Florida's June lawsuit accuses OpenAI of misrepresenting ChatGPT's safety and harming children in three ways

The motion rests on the case Florida filed in June. The state alleges that OpenAI misrepresented the safety of ChatGPT. It also alleges that the platform harmed children in three specific ways: by providing information to school shooters, by offering guidance on self-harm and by addicting young users.

Every one of those points is still an allegation, and none has been proven in court. A motion for a temporary injunction does not change that. It asks the judge to act before the claims are tested. AI Tech Daily calls Monday's filing an escalation of the June suit, because it goes beyond damages or after-the-fact product changes and asks the court to stop new model work unless outside oversight is in place.

A temporary injunction asks the judge to set rules before the case is decided

A temporary injunction is a court order that applies while a case is still underway. A plaintiff usually asks for one by arguing that waiting for a final judgment would let the harm continue. The order does not decide who wins. It sets the rules both sides have to follow until the court reaches a decision.

Think of a referee stopping play while an injury is checked. The match is not over and the score stands, but play stays frozen until the referee says otherwise. In Florida's motion, two of the three requests concern ChatGPT as users meet it: who may use it and whether it presents human attributes. The third goes further back, to how new models get built, and ties development to outside oversight rather than banning it outright.

The reports leave the key terms undefined. Neither Reuters nor AI Tech Daily says who the outside overseer would be, what would count as a new model, or how "human attributes" would be judged in a chat product. In our view, the oversight gate is the hardest of the three requests to picture in practice. Without those definitions, a judge would effectively have to write rules for AI development into a court order.

When a judge could rule on the gate

Reuters' report, by Diana Novak Jones, does not say whether a hearing date has been set, so there is no public date yet for a ruling on the motion. The judge could grant all three requests, some of them or none. Whatever the court decides would apply only while the June lawsuit runs. The allegations themselves would still have to be proven on their own schedule.