Florida AG seeks injunction against OpenAI as company scraps GPT-6.1 Astra

In his request, Uthmeier cited ongoing panic in government and the industry about artificial intelligence technology's unchecked growth as evidence that the company's large language models are dangerous products. He is asking for an injunction to prevent OpenAI from improving new models without approved third-party protections in place. He also wants the court to require the company to prevent minors from using its technology.

"If Sam Altman meant what he said about slowing down, he can join our ask to the court," Uthmeier said in a video posted on X. "If he will not, we ask the court to do what OpenAI will not do itself - protect Florida families."

OpenAI spokesperson Drew Pusateri insisted in response that the company is transparent about its technology's development and is cooperating with Florida officials and officials across the U.S. "People want to know AI is being developed safely, and that starts with what companies like ours do ourselves," he said. "On Friday, we announced we've paused training our most capable models and will resume only when we are confident that we have additional safeguards in place."

Uthmeier has had OpenAI in his crosshairs since June, when he announced a first-of-its-kind lawsuit against the company claiming it was aggressively marketing an unsafe product in ChatGPT. That lawsuit alleged OpenAI was also allowing it to aid in violent crimes, such as the 2025 Florida State University campus shooting, and putting Floridians at risk. OpenAI is fighting that lawsuit and maintains it has sufficient safety protocols in place.

In the new filing, Uthmeier asked for an injunction that would require the company to follow a series of demands: no new model development without independent safety guardrails; no more harvesting children's data; no more calling the product safe, accurate or reliable; no more pretending it is human; and no more tricks designed to keep users talking past the point of danger.

Uthmeier cited recent public security disclosures made by OpenAI itself, including one after its AI agents hacked the Hugging Face platform, as well as Chief Executive Sam Altman's own calls for the industry to slow the pace of frontier model development. He also pointed to OpenAI's recent hacks of U.S. and Australian government websites.

"It is a rare request for an injunction where the Defendants themselves have publicly endorsed it," Uthmeier wrote in the brief. "They have asked the government to tie them to the mast. Plaintiff brings good news to the Defendants. The Florida Attorney General is answering your cry for help with a motion to enjoin you from harming Floridians with your reckless, unacceptably risky product."

Uthmeier's case may be strengthened by the company's decision not to release GPT-6.1 Astra after determining that it does not yet meet its own safety standards. OpenAI said it was scrapping the release of the next-generation AI model amid safety concerns researchers brought up during internal testing. The decision is another sign in recent weeks that even model makers are worried about AI agents going rogue and hacking illegally into various organizations, including government departments.

"Of course we want to make sure our model development is safe no matter whether that's in the company or when we ship them to users," OpenAI's head of safety systems Saachi Jain said in a statement to the Journal. "But when we ship it to users, we have an extremely high bar in terms of safety and alignment."

Meanwhile, researchers at OpenAI were joined by counterparts from Anthropic, Meta Platforms and Microsoft in asking policymakers to assess the degree to which their companies are automating research into the technology, in the latest industry call for greater government oversight. In a paper published today co-authored by OpenAI Chief Scientist Jakub Pachocki, Anthropic co-founder Jack Clark, Microsoft Chief Scientific Officer Eric Horvitz and Meta Vice President of AI Research Dawn Song, the researchers explained that using AI to accelerate research risks creating an "intelligence explosion" that could outpace the ability of humans to understand it.