Vandana Joshi, whose husband Tiru Chabba was killed in the April 2025 mass shooting at Florida State University, filed a federal lawsuit Sunday accusing OpenAI of negligence, alleging that its ChatGPT tool provided the gunman with tactical guidance that enabled the rampage.
Florida authorities previously disclosed that ChatGPT gave the shooter, 21-year-old Phoenix Ikner, specifics on when and where to attack to maximize casualties, including the lunchtime hours near the Student Union, which houses food vendors and shops. The chatbot also recommended firearm and ammunition types, and told Ikner that an attack would draw more media coverage if children were involved.
“OpenAI knew this would happen. It’s happened before and it was only a matter of time before it happened again,” Joshi said in a statement Monday. “They put their profits over our safety and it killed my husband. They need to be responsible before another family has to go through this.”
The lawsuit, filed in federal court, argues that OpenAI should have programmed ChatGPT with guardrails capable of recognizing a developing threat — such as a person asking how to plan a mass shooting — and of alerting law enforcement. It contends the company’s failure constitutes a direct risk to public safety.
OpenAI denied any wrongdoing. “In this case, ChatGPT provided factual responses to questions with information that could be found broadly across public sources on the internet, and it did not encourage or promote illegal or harmful activity,” spokesman Drew Pusateri said in an emailed statement, calling the shooting a “terrible crime.”
Separately, Florida’s attorney general said in April that there was a rare criminal investigation into whether ChatGPT’s responses enabled Ikner’s actions. The shooter, who was a Florida State student, has pleaded not guilty to two counts of first-degree murder and multiple counts of attempted murder; prosecutors are seeking the death penalty.
The shooting killed Chabba, a 45-year-old father of two and regional vice president for Aramark Collegiate Hospitality, and Robert Morales, 57, a campus dining coordinator. Six others were wounded. The lawsuit joins a series of legal actions seeking damages from tech companies over the alleged downstream effects of their products on users’ violence and mental health.