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The state of Florida is seeking a temporary injunction to stop OpenAI from continuing to develop what it calls a “reckless, unacceptably risky product” without the deployment of “third-party approved safety guardrails.” The new legal motion, filed Monday morning, is part of a civil lawsuit the state of Florida originally filed in June, arguing that ChatGPT represented “a threat to the public safety of Floridians,” specifically by preying on vulnerable populations like children and violent or delusional adults. But that original lawsuit came before the Hugging Face hacking incident and the subsequent publicized warnings of catastrophic misalignment risk that have spurred industry-wide calls to slow the development and training of so-called frontier models. Following that string of events, OpenAI on Friday announced it had already halted training of its “most-capable models” until it could validate safety protocols intended to prevent agents from accessing the open Internet during training. But in seeking an injunction from the state court, Florida argues that OpenAI has “repeatedly shown they are incapable of monitoring their AI, and hesitant in revealing rogue activity once discovered.” In arguing for this injunction, the state points to the Hugging Face incident as well as recent high-profile misalignment cases involving unintended and unauthorized attempts to access Australian and US government servers. Florida also cites AI industry leaders, including many from OpenAI, in arguing that the AI industry is literally asking for this kind of outside regulation. The motion points to statements from Paul Christiano, who said on joining the company’s board this month that he believes “there is a meaningful risk that rapid acceleration in AI capabilities leads to catastrophic and irreversible loss of control in the very near term.” The motion also points to OpenAI’s own “An Alien Mind” essay and an open letter from 1,300 AI industry employees, both of which call for enforced slowdowns on frontier AI development, if necessary. Four months ago, we filed the first state-led lawsuit against OpenAI and Sam Altman. Today, we are asking the court for a temporary injunction. Stop calling it safe. Stop pretending it’s human. Stop selling it to kids. https://t.co/AEXvz7VQUd — Attorney General James Uthmeier (@AGJamesUthmeier) September 28, 2026 Citing laws that allow the state to exercise control over companies that are a “public nuisance,” Florida argues that OpenAI is “the greatest public nuisance ever created by the hand of man, capable of laying waste to global civilization.”
document fetched 2026-09-29 02:59 · canonical https://arstechnica.com/ai/2026/09/florida-asks-court-to-put-the-brakes-on-openais-frontier-ai-development