Authorities have launched a criminal probe into whether the artificial-intelligence platform ChatGPT helped a man plan a deadly mass shooting at Florida State University last year.
Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier said Tuesday that his office opened the probe after reviewing chats that accused gunman Phoenix Ikner had with one of the platform’s bots in the lead-up to the April 17, 2025, horror.
“ChatGPT offered significant advice to the shooter before he committed such heinous crimes,” Utmeier said at a press conference in Tampa.
For example, the chatbot told Ikner what type of gun to use, what type of ammunition to purchase, what kind of firearm is best for a close-range shooting and what part of campus would be the most crowded at the time, the AG said.
“My prosecutors have looked at this, and they’ve told me if it was a person on the other end of the screen, we would be charging them with murder,” Utmeier said.
Ikner, a student at the college, opened fire using his stepmother’s service pistol outside the student union of FSU’s Tallahassee campus, killing Robert Morales, 57, and Tiru Chabba, 45, both Aramark vendors, according to officials. The suspect’s stepmother is a deputy with the Leon County sheriff’s office.
