OpenAI is under criminal investigation — why chatbots don’t always follow the law

Credit: Novikov Alexey/Shutterstock Prosecutors in Florida have launched a criminal investigation into the artificial-intelligence company OpenAI, and whether the company’s chatbot ChatGPT was used to assist the suspect in a mass school shooting at Florida State University in April last year. No charges have been filed against the company, nor has it been accused of a crime, but the investigation has put a spotlight on one of the biggest challenges facing AI companies: why is it so hard to develop chatbots that adhere to human laws, ethics and values? Florida law states that anyone who aids someone in committing a crime can also be held responsible for that crime. In a statement to the media , the state’s Attorney-general James Uthmeier said that if the chatbot were a person, then they would be facing charges for murder. Concerns about large language model (LLM) chatbots giving dangerous or illegal advice have been growing for the past few years, following examples of them encouraging people to take their own life, create illegal sexual material and commit financial fraud. Regardless of whether the Florida investigation leads to legal consequences for OpenAI, based in San Francisco, California, it will increase pressure on companies to prove that their safety measures are effective, says Usman Naseem, an LLM alignment researcher at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia. …