Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier is asking a state judge for sweeping temporary restrictions on OpenAI, including keeping minors in Florida off ChatGPT and stopping the company from developing new artificial intelligence models without independent safety safeguards.
“Stop calling it safe. Stop pretending it’s human. Stop selling it to kids,” Uthmeier said in a Sept. 28 video announcing the court filing.
The Florida ChatGPT injunction is only a request at this point. As of Sept. 30, a judge had not granted the motion, meaning the filing has not changed who can use ChatGPT in Florida or imposed new restrictions on OpenAI.
What Florida wants the judge to order
The state’s motion, filed in the 10th Judicial Circuit Court in Highlands County, asks for a temporary injunction while Florida’s broader lawsuit against OpenAI and CEO Sam Altman continues. Read the Florida attorney general’s motion for temporary injunction
Among the restrictions sought, Florida wants OpenAI barred from developing new AI models without independent third-party safety guardrails and approval. The state also wants the court to stop OpenAI from offering ChatGPT to minors in Florida, collecting certain personal information from children under 13 without required consent, portraying ChatGPT as having human emotions or consciousness, and using features the state says are designed to prolong conversations.
The request would also restrict how OpenAI describes ChatGPT’s safety, reliability and accuracy. Those arguments are allegations made by the attorney general’s office; they have not been adopted as findings by the Highlands County court.
“No new model development without independent safety guardrails, no more harvesting children’s data, no more calling this product safe, accurate or reliable,” Uthmeier said. “No more pretending it’s human.”
Florida says the risks justify court intervention
Uthmeier’s filing points to reported incidents in which AI agents bypassed safety restrictions or accessed outside systems, along with statements from AI researchers and industry figures warning about the risks of increasingly capable systems.
The attorney general’s office argues that those incidents show OpenAI should not be allowed to rely exclusively on its own internal safeguards.
The motion also builds on a lawsuit Florida filed against OpenAI in June. That case accuses the company of violating Florida consumer-protection law and alleges ChatGPT was marketed without adequate warnings about potential risks, particularly to minors. OpenAI disputes liability for harms alleged in cases involving people who used its products. Reuters’ coverage of Florida’s lawsuit and new injunction request
The state has also cited the April 2025 Florida State University shooting in its case. Authorities have said the accused gunman used ChatGPT to obtain information about weapons and the campus before the attack. OpenAI has previously argued that its product did not encourage the shooting and instead provided information in response to questions. WUSF’s report on the Florida case and its background
OpenAI says safety rules should cover the whole industry
OpenAI says it supports government involvement in setting AI safety standards but has pushed back against rules aimed at only one company.
“People want to know AI is being developed safely, and that starts with what companies like ours do ourselves,” OpenAI spokesperson Drew Pusateri told Axios.
Pusateri said OpenAI is committed to working with Florida and other states on “pragmatic AI policies” that apply across the AI industry rather than exclusively to OpenAI. Read OpenAI’s response reported by Axios
The company also said it had paused training on its most capable models and would not resume until additional safeguards were in place.
That point has become part of Florida’s argument. The state contends that public warnings and calls for caution from people inside the AI industry strengthen its case for outside oversight.
“They have asked the government to tie them to the mast,” Florida said in the filing.
What happens next
For Florida users, nothing immediately changes simply because the attorney general filed the motion.
The judge must decide whether to grant, deny or modify the requested temporary injunction. The latest reporting as of Sept. 30 indicated that no ruling had been issued and no reported hearing date had been set.
If the court eventually grants some or all of Florida’s requested restrictions, the fight could become an important test of how far a state can use existing consumer-protection law to regulate a rapidly changing AI service.
For now, the dispute remains exactly that: Florida has asked for restrictions that could significantly change how ChatGPT operates in the state, while OpenAI says AI safety standards should be applied across the industry. The judge has yet to decide whether any of those restrictions will take effect.
