FSU shooting lawsuit weighs if AI chatbots have First Amendment rights

Are the ChatGPT outputs to the accused Florida State University shooter the “hazardous” outcome of a product – or is the information protected speech under the First Amendment?

In a new court filing, ChatGPT owner OpenAI says it’s the latter.

Attorneys representing the company say the widow of one of two people killed in April 2025 on FSU’s Tallahassee campus “seeks to hold OpenAI liable based on ChatGPT providing truthful information responsive” to the shooter’s questions.

Vandana Joshi, the widow of shooting victim Tiru Chabba, filed the federal lawsuit in May in the Northern District of Florida, alleging that the AI-powered chatbot gave alleged shooter Phoenix Ikner “advice and recommendations” to carry out his crime.

OpenAI is also facing lawsuits from injured students over Ikner’s use of ChatGPT, one filed in June from a victim injured after being shot three times and two more in July, each from shot and injured students. Also, another widow on behalf of slain FSU employee Robero Morales filed a lawsuit against OpenAI on Aug. 31, alleging that the AI chatbot actively assisted the gunman’s violent plans.

OpenAI’s legal defense ties into a debate by First Amendment experts across the country: Does artificial intelligence hold the same free speech weight of other information providers, like book publishers, libraries or search engines?

As John Coleman, the legislative counsel for the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), put it, holding someone responsible for providing lawful, publicly available information opens a “dangerous door,” creating a “rule like that could extend beyond just artificial intelligence to search engines, libraries, and publishers every time someone uses information they provide for unlawful ends.”

And at least one court has questioned whether AI-produced language is traditional “speech” recognized under First Amendment law.

OpenAI: Providers of information can’t be liable for its misuse

In a motion asking U.S. District Judge Mark Walker to dismiss the lawsuit, OpenAI’s attorneys condemned the “horrific act of violence” allegedly committed by Ikner on campus, but also said information providers don’t have the “legal duties (the) plaintiff seeks to impose” in their product liability and negligence claims.

“Such a duty would make every provider of information a guarantor against the possibility that recipients might misuse what they learned to commit intentional crimes,” OpenAI’s attorneys wrote in a Sept. 25 court filing.

“That result is not consistent with Florida law or the First Amendment.”

Records show Ikner engaged in lengthy conversations with ChatGPT on political ideology, for instance, and the lawsuit argues that the “supportive relationship” Ikner had with the chatbot “emboldened him to move forward and cement a plan to resort to a violent act ….”

Moreover, ChatGPT failed to “connect the dots” that Ikner was planning to harm others, the suit says.

“This is a product that was fundamentally flawed,” said Bakari Sellers, a national civil rights lawyer who represents Chabba’s family, including the two surviving children, in an interview with the USA TODAY Network. “ChatGPT was an integral part of a life-altering experience for our clients. I mean, ChatGPT aided in taking lives.”

Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier also is looking to hold OpenAI’s chief executive, Sam Altman, personally liable for alleged violence and harm his company had on Floridians. One instance referenced in his lawsuit is the FSU shooting, and he likened the AI platform to an actual murderer.

“If ChatGPT were a person, it would be facing charges for murder,” Uthmeier said on X on April 21, when announcing his office’s criminal investigation into OpenAI.

Do AI chatbots have free speech rights?

There’s a high standard to rebut a free speech argument made by OpenAI’s attorneys, said Clay Calvert, a nonresident senior fellow of the American Enterprise Institute.

He told the USA TODAY Network – Florida not only does one have to show that speech was “intended to incite an unlawful act,” but attorneys will have to provide it the platform’s outputs were meant to incite lawless action and also substantially likely that lawless action would occur – all tough standards to meet in court.

Chat logs shown in the court records include Ikner uploading an image of his ammo to match his gun, asking whether the gun is lethal in close range, how to turn off the safety mechanism, what time is busiest in the FSU student union, what happens to school shooters and where they’re held in Florida.

The outputs were each tailored to the individual questions, including ChatGPT telling Ikner the uploaded image included “12 gauge shotgun shells,” and that the shells are extremely lethal. The output messages also tell Ikner where safety mechanisms are usually located and that it didn’t appear that a Glock he sent an image of had a “safety button.”

Although the outputs are generated by artificial intelligence, there are humans behind the tool’s creation, Calvert said, which then kicks in First Amendment defenses for the creators. Even though the Chabba family is arguing that this is a product liability case, Calvert noted that OpenAI argued it wasn’t a product, but a “speech service.”

“It’s going to be one of the first times that we see the notion of whether speech that’s generated by generative artificial intelligence, a GenAI tool such as ChatGPT, will be protected by the First Amendment under the incitement to violence standard,” Calvert said. “You’re going to have to prove incitement, that they actually intended it, that it was imminent.”

Under U.S. Supreme Court precedent, speech is generally protected by the First Amendment unless it is intended and likely to cause imminent lawless action.

The First Amendment also protects the right for an audience to receive the information, and this principle doesn’t change because “AI is used as a search tool to find it,” said FIRE’s Coleman.

But Sellers, the Chabba family lawyer, said the case is about a defective product. He denounced the argument likening AI’s outputs to search engines since he said that case law supports that the AI tool falls under the definition of a product.

“This is not the equivalent of a library. This is not the equivalent of a publisher. In fact, those are apples and lions,” Sellers said.

Florida’s sought AI regulations in recent years

AI’s rulebook has often been defended by a tragedy from 2024, when a 14-year-old in central Florida died by suicide following an extended conversation with a chatbot. The child’s mother, Megan Garcia, sued Character Technologies in the first federal lawsuit accusing an AI company of liability in a user’s death.

But that lawsuit also opened the door to a developing conversation in the legal world of whether nonhuman speakers have free speech rights, after the AI chatbot company argued that the content is speech that users have a right to hear or read.

The judge in that case acknowledged the First Amendment rights of listeners, but said she wasn’t prepared to agree that the chatbot’s output was speech since the company needed to elaborate how the words strung together is “expressive such that it is speech.” The case later was settled.

Yet that child’s death prompted Florida lawmakers, encouraged by Gov. Ron DeSantis, to consider forming an “AI Bill of Rights,” which would have created guardrails for minors interacting with AI chatbots.

It would have mandated companies obtain parental permission and give users notices to take breaks from AI use. The Florida House under then-Speaker Daniel Perez, a Miami Republican, didn’t take up the bill and it died in a special session earlier in 2026.

Stephany Matat’s role covering First Amendment issues at the USA TODAY Network – Florida is made possible by a collaboration among Freedom Forum, Journalism Funding Partners and the USA TODAY Network. Freedom Forum does not provide editorial input. Reach Matat at [email protected] and @StephanyMatat on X.

This article originally appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: FSU shooting lawsuit weighs if AI chatbots have First Amendment rights

Reporting by Stephany Matat, USA TODAY NETWORK – Florida / Tallahassee Democrat

USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect

Copyright Reuters or USA Today Network via Reuters Connect

This story was originally published October 5, 2026 at 5:05 AM.