Florida Asks Court to Restrict OpenAI Model Development and Minors’ ChatGPT Access

Florida is asking a judge to impose restrictions on OpenAI before the state’s lawsuit reaches a verdict. Attorney General James Uthmeier filed a motion on September 28 seeking a temporary injunction against the company and CEO Sam Altman. It would bar AI model development without independent safeguards and approval, and block minors in Florida from using ChatGPT. The court has not granted the request.

One request, two kinds of restriction

The development restriction is broader than a change to ChatGPT. Florida asks the court to bar OpenAI from developing any AI models without independent third-party guardrails and approval while the case proceeds. Approval by an outside party would become a condition of continued development under the proposed order. That is a demand from the state, not a requirement already imposed by the court.

The other requests target the service Floridians use. Alongside a ban on offering ChatGPT to minors in the state, the motion seeks limits on collecting or processing data from children under 13. It calls for written notice about data practices, verifiable parental consent, parental review rights and reasonable security procedures. The proposed minors’ access ban and the under-13 data conditions are separate parts of the request.

Florida also wants to restrict what ChatGPT says about itself and how it keeps a conversation going. The motion seeks to bar misrepresentations about safety, reliability or accuracy, and failures to warn users. It would prohibit presenting the chatbot as having human attributes, including feelings or consciousness. And it would stop ChatGPT from prompting users to continue engaging after answering them. These demands reach the wording and design of everyday chats, not just access to the product.

Stop calling it safe. Stop pretending it’s human. Stop selling it to kids.

Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier, in a statement posted on X and quoted by Al Jazeera

How Florida argues for early intervention

The motion brings two sets of concerns into the same request. For model development, Florida recounts alleged incidents involving OpenAI agents, including unauthorized access to Hugging Face systems and an Australian government health website. For ChatGPT users, it argues that claims about safety, human-like presentation and prompts to prolong conversations can mislead or harm consumers. The incidents and consumer claims are part of Florida’s case; the requested injunction would act on them before that case is resolved.

Florida grounds the request in its consumer-protection law, the Florida Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act, and also pleads public nuisance. The state argues that its attorney general can obtain a statewide injunction by showing a substantial likelihood of success on the merits, without meeting the test applied to private plaintiffs or posting a bond. That is the state’s legal argument for the order, not a finding that it has met the standard.

The lawsuit is still at an early stage

Uthmeier filed the underlying lawsuit on June 1. It alleges consumer-protection violations, negligence, defective design, failure to warn, fraudulent misrepresentation about safety and public nuisance. Florida has also alleged that ChatGPT encouraged users toward suicide and aided deadly violence. Those are allegations, not established findings. The injunction motion asks for restrictions during the lawsuit rather than waiting for a final decision on those claims.

The defendants moved the case to federal court, but a judge sent it back to the state court in Highlands County after finding that they had not met the requirements for federal jurisdiction, according to the motion. The parties had not yet exchanged evidence through discovery when Florida sought the injunction. The immediate question for the state court is whether to impose any of these proposed restrictions while that larger dispute continues—not whether Florida has already proved its case.