Florida Opens Criminal Probe Into ChatGPT Over Role in School Shooting

All of those injured have since been released from hospital, and the suspect, 20-year-old FSU student Phoenix Ikner, is in custody.Prosecutors reviewed Ikner’s devices and claimed he spoke to the chatbot extensively. While Ikner does not appear to have been driven into “AI psychosis,” as some mentally unstable individuals have, he allegedly talked to the chatbot multiple times about the shooting.ChatGPT “offered significant advice to the shooter before he committed such heinous crimes,” Uthmeier said. One message involved the suspect quizzing ChatGPT about a gun’s power at close range, and which ammunition was needed to load it.On the day of the crime, Ikner allegedly asked the chatbot how America would react to a shooting at Florida State, and when the most crowded time was at the student union, the area of the campus where the shooting took place.“If this were a person on the other end of the screen, we would be charging them with murder,” Uthmeier said at a press conference.While Florida’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, isn’t exactly a favorite of the left, he has been at the forefront of state AI regulation. DeSantis has asked the state legislature to come up with legal AI guardrails in a special session next week.But the country’s executive branch has taken the opposite stance. President Donald Trump has pushed to deregulate AI and force states to comply with federal policy. We’ll see which GOP sect ends up victorious, but Florida’s leadership on the issue is a welcome development.