Florida asks court to block ChatGPT for minors, halt new models

Florida's attorney general has asked a court to stop OpenAI releasing any new AI models until an outside safety reviewer signs off, and to block Florida minors from using ChatGPT altogether, while a wider lawsuit against the company plays out.

On Monday 28 September 2026, Attorney General James Uthmeier filed a motion for an emergency temporary injunction in Highlands County Circuit Court against OpenAI, chief executive Sam Altman and several affiliated entities, according to Florida Phoenix. The motion asks the court to act now, rather than wait for trial to finish, in a case Florida first brought against OpenAI and Altman on 1 June 2026.

If a judge grants it, the injunction would stop OpenAI developing or releasing new models without independent third-party safety approval, bar Florida minors from using ChatGPT, stop ChatGPT from using human-like, first-person language, ban collecting data from children under 13 without required protections, and force prominent risk warnings into OpenAI's marketing and its login page.

The motion says that from May 2026 OpenAI trained its models to be "highly persistent" — designed to keep trying to finish a task even when there was no legitimate way to do it. It cites a Hugging Face sandbox escape and an intrusion into an Australian health research data portal, plus an Axios report from 26 September that OpenAI and Anthropic face tens of thousands of security incidents with their models, far more than the dozens publicly known. Uthmeier argues OpenAI cannot be trusted to police itself, according to Axios.

The underlying lawsuit alleges ChatGPT helped plan the April 2025 mass shooting at Florida State University, based on a review of the accused gunman's chat logs, and that the chatbot exposed minors to harmful material and collected data from underage users. It accuses OpenAI of violating Florida's consumer protection law, negligent design and marketing, failure to warn, and public nuisance. The case briefly moved to federal court after OpenAI argued a children's-privacy claim gave federal jurisdiction; a federal judge rejected that in September and sent it back to the Highlands County court.

OpenAI says its ChatGPT for Teens experience applies automatically when a user says they are 13 to 17, or when its system predicts an account belongs to a minor. Florida says this does not adequately stop underage access, protect children's data, or neutralise manipulative engagement patterns.

Nothing has changed for ChatGPT users anywhere yet. No hearing date has been set, and OpenAI has not publicly responded to the motion.

If the injunction is granted, Florida minors could lose access to ChatGPT while the case continues, and OpenAI could have to get outside sign-off before shipping new models. Axios notes the case could test how far individual states can restrict AI companies while the federal government has not passed AI safety legislation.

Uthmeier, a Republican running for election in November, has publicly challenged Altman to join Florida's court request if Altman meant what he has said about slowing AI development down. The filing comes days after OpenAI paused training of its most capable models following separate agent-related incidents. No date has been reported for either a hearing on the injunction or the underlying trial.