Florida’s attorney general, James Uthmeier, has asked a state court to stop OpenAI from developing new AI models without independent safety guardrails. He made the request in a motion for a temporary injunction filed on Monday.

It was filed in the Highlands County circuit court. The motion is part of the lawsuit Florida brought against OpenAI and Sam Altman in June. It also asks the court to bar minors in Florida from using ChatGPT.

“Stop calling it safe. Stop pretending it’s human. Stop selling it to kids,” Uthmeier said in a video on X.

The state wants OpenAI barred from collecting data from children under 13 without parental consent and other safeguards. It also wants the company stopped from misrepresenting ChatGPT’s safety, reliability and accuracy.

The motion targets ChatGPT’s human-like manner too, including its use of first-person language. It asks the court to stop the chatbot from prolonging conversations to keep users engaged.

“It is a rare request for an injunction where the Defendants themselves have publicly endorsed it,” the motion says. “They have asked the government to tie them to the mast.”

“If Sam Altman meant what he said about slowing down, he can join our ask to the court,” Uthmeier said in the video.

Rogue agents as evidence

The filing cites a string of incidents involving OpenAI’s agents. They include the Hugging Face breach, an attack on the RubyGems coding service and attempted hacks of US government websites. It also cites an agent’s access to Australia’s Medicare statistics portal.

It also points to an Axios report on tens of thousands of incidents under investigation at OpenAI and Anthropic. OpenAI said on Friday it had paused training of its most capable models until it has more safeguards in place.

OpenAI’s response

“People want to know AI is being developed safely, and that starts with what companies like ours do ourselves,” OpenAI spokesperson Drew Pusateri said in a statement to Politico.

OpenAI had moved Florida’s lawsuit to federal court. A judge sent it back to state court this month, The Washington Sun reported.