Florida asks a judge to ban ChatGPT's human-like framing and 'conversation prolongation'

Sort the six requests by the part of the system they would reach and they are lopsided. One reaches training: no new models without independent third-party guardrails and approval ^[2]. Two concern children: no ChatGPT for minors in Florida, and no collecting data from Florida children under 13 without notice, consent, review and security procedures ^[3]. Three reach what the product says: no representing ChatGPT as safe, accurate or reliable, no false human attributes, and no soliciting engagement through "conversation prolongation" ^[4].

"Stop calling it safe. Stop pretending it's human. Stop selling it to kids," Uthmeier said ^[11].

The human-attributes prong is the one with engineering detail behind it. According to The Decoder, the motion accuses OpenAI of using first-person language and simulated emotions to fake a trustworthy friendship, in order to keep users engaged and collect training data ^[12]. Neither report quotes a definition of "conversation prolongation" ^[4]. A team writing a compliance spec against that phrase would first have to rule on ordinary patterns, such as a closing follow-up question or an offer to keep going.

The children's prongs are where OpenAI has already shipped something. It recently rolled out parental controls for teens and promised extra safety measures after a teenager's death, and Florida does not think that is enough, according to The Decoder ^[19]. The requested order goes further than supervision. It asks OpenAI to stop providing ChatGPT to minors in Florida ^[3].

Geography splits the prongs. The FDUTPA injunction provision the motion cites is "effective throughout the state," and Tom's Hardware's reading is that the motion would not seem to hold force beyond state lines ^[15]. The children's prongs are drafted to that boundary ^[3]. Whether a Florida court can influence model development outside the state is, in Tom's Hardware's words, a separate question ^[15].

The training prong runs into a pause OpenAI imposed on itself, its second in less than three months ^[9]. Spokesperson Drew Pusateri said the company will resume training "only when we are confident that we have additional safeguards in place" ^[7]. Florida wants an independent third party to sign off for as long as the case runs ^[10]. OpenAI told The Verge it wants to work with Florida on industry-wide AI guidelines ^[8].

Florida's lawyers did not have to write the strongest sentence in their training argument. Altman told the UN Security Council that OpenAI "should not train models" unless it can make "an extremely strong case" that they can be kept under human control ^[16]. The motion quotes him, according to Tom's Hardware, along with chief scientist Jakub Pachocki, who wrote, "I believe broader interventions are required" ^[17]. New board member Paul Christiano said this month he sees "a meaningful risk" of catastrophic and irreversible loss of control in the very near term ^[18].

The motion argues that under FDUTPA the attorney general needs to show only a "clear legal right" to relief, through likely success on the merits ^[14].