Florida AG Seeks Emergency Injunction to Halt ChatGPT Development

Florida is escalating its fight against OpenAI. State Attorney General James Uthmeier has asked for a temporary injunction against OpenAI and ChatGPT, claiming the company doesn’t have the ability to properly regulate its own technology.

What Florida is asking for

The 39-page motion asks the court to temporarily prohibit OpenAI from developing new artificial intelligence models without independent third-party safeguards and approval. The motion also asks the court to bar OpenAI from offering ChatGPT to minors in Florida altogether, and separately, from collecting data from children under 13 without meeting specific parental-consent and disclosure requirements.

The request was filed on Monday in the Highlands County circuit court as part of the lawsuit Florida brought against OpenAI and Sam Altman in June.

The allegations behind the filing

The 83-page complaint accuses OpenAI of deceptive practices, ignoring internal safety warnings, and prioritizing commercial gain over user safety. The state claims ChatGPT aided suspects in high-profile crimes, including a 2025 campus shooting at Florida State University, and offered dangerous self-harm guidance to minors.

Florida’s request specifically cites a Sept. 26 Axios scoop that OpenAI and Anthropic are facing tens of thousands of security incidents with their models, not the dozens that are publicly known.

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OpenAI already hit pause on training

OpenAI recently announced it was pausing training on its most capable models and would resume only when additional safeguards and “alignment improvements” are in place.

Uthmeier’s framing leaves little wiggle room. “Stop calling it safe,” Uthmeier said in a video posted to X on Monday. “Stop pretending it’s human. Stop selling it to kids. If Sam Altman meant what he said about slowing down, he can join our ask to the court. If he will not, we ask the court to do what OpenAI will not do for itself: protect Florida families.”

Why it matters for the AI trade

The legal fight could further test how far states can go to restrict AI companies despite the federal government declining to enact guardrails. In the absence of federal action, states are increasingly striking out on their own to regulate artificial intelligence and other automated systems.

A patchwork of state-level AI rules is a live risk factor for every company building or monetizing large models, and could weigh on the broader AI capex story if more states follow Florida’s lead. For more, see other coverage on Unusual Whales news.

Options market and stocks to watch

OpenAI is private, so the tape reads through its partners, competitors, and infrastructure names.

• MSFT: Watch for any read-through on Microsoft, OpenAI’s largest backer and its cloud partner, if state-level restrictions expand.
• GOOGL: Watch Alphabet for relative positioning as regulators zero in on OpenAI specifically.
• META: Watch Meta given its own consumer AI rollout and prior state-level scrutiny around minors.
• NVDA: Watch Nvidia for any softening in the training-demand narrative if more labs pause or throttle model development.
• PLTR: Watch Palantir as a name tied to enterprise and government AI where compliance frameworks may benefit incumbents.

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