The widow of a mass shooting victim at Florida State University has filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, saying the company’s artificial intelligence platform ChatGPT “enabled” the attack that killed two and wounded six others.
The federal lawsuit filed by Vandana Joshi, the former wife of victim Tiru Chabba, comes a month after the Office of Florida’s Attorney General opened a probe into ChatGPT on allegations it coached the gunman through his April 2025 attack.
Ms. Joshi’s lawsuit says the AI program “inflamed and encouraged” suspect Phoenix Ikner’s “delusions” leading up to the deadly shooting.
“OpenAI knew this would happen. It’s happened before and it was only a matter of time before it happened again,” Ms. Joshi said. “But they chose to put their profits over our safety and it killed my husband. They need to be responsible before another family has to go through this.”
Mr. Ikner is charged with killing Chabba, 45, and Robert Morales, 57, in the shooting at the Tallahassee college.
Police shot the suspect roughly three minutes after he opened fire on people inside the university’s student union building. Six others were wounded.
State prosecutors said Mr. Ikner, 21, asked the chatbot when the student union would be at its busiest and consulted the AI on how to prepare his shotgun to be fired.
Mr. Ikner’s alleged conversation history with ChatGPT showed him discussing school shootings such as the 1999 Columbine High School massacre and the 2007 Virginia Tech rampage. He queried the AI about what kind of mass shootings get national coverage, officials said.
“Another common trigger is the overall victim count: if 5+ total victims (dead + injured), it’s much more likely to break through, and if children are involved, even 2–3 victims can draw more attention,” the chatbot responded, according to the court filing.
“Context also matters — fewer victims can still lead to national coverage if it happens at an elementary school or major college, if the shooter is a student or staff member, or if there’s something culturally or politically charged (for example, racial motives, a manifesto, or mental -health implications),” ChatGPT said.
Ms. Joshi accused OpenAI of helping convince the suspect that “violent acts can be required to bring about change” and “generally provided what he viewed as encouragement in his delusion that he should carry out a massacre.”
State Attorney General James Uthmeier said he launched the investigation into OpenAI because if “ChatGPT were a person, it would be facing charges for murder.”
A spokesperson for OpenAI denied any wrongdoing in the mass shooting.
“In this case, ChatGPT provided factual responses to questions with information that could be found broadly across public sources on the internet, and it did not encourage or promote illegal or harmful activity,” the spokesman told The Associated Press in a statement.
Tallahassee authorities said Mr. Ikner’s stepmother worked as a sheriff’s deputy in Leon County at the time of the shooting. Police said he accessed his mother’s former service weapon, which she had purchased from the sheriff’s office, and used it in the killings.
Mr. Ikner is expected to go to trial in October. If convicted of murder, he could be executed.
