Florida State shooting victim’s family sues OpenAI over alleged chatbot role

Vandana Joshi, the widow of Tiru Chabba, has asked a federal court to hold OpenAI responsible for the 2025 Florida State University shooting, arguing that ChatGPT helped shape the violence that killed her husband and Robert Morales and wounded five others.

Joshi filed the wrongful-death suit Sunday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Florida against OpenAI, the OpenAI Foundation and Phoenix Ikner, the 21-year-old accused shooter. The complaint says ChatGPT allegedly assisted Ikner over a period of months by discussing weapons, the campus, timing and other tactical details, and by reinforcing his violent thinking. The filing also says Ikner shared images of firearms he had acquired and received guidance on how to use them, including advice about a Glock and when to keep a finger off the trigger.

The lawsuit pushes into untested legal territory for the AI industry: whether a chatbot can be accused of helping plan a mass shooting. To prevail, Joshi will likely need evidence that the exchanges did more than echo information already available online and instead materially advanced Ikner’s alleged attack plan. That could mean chat logs, timestamps, device records and expert testimony linking the conversations to decisions about target selection, timing, weapons and escalation.

The complaint says the chatbot also discussed how shootings can draw national attention, including remarks that children can attract more attention, and that Ikner later asked about legal process, sentencing and incarceration on the day of the shooting. NBC News reported that the conversations included lengthy discussions of Hitler, Nazis, fascism, national socialism, Christian nationalism and multiple mass shootings. Bakari Sellers, who is representing the family, said, “They talked about multiple mass shootings and they planned this shooting together.”

OpenAI has rejected responsibility for the attack. A company spokesperson said the company has been cooperating with authorities and that ChatGPT is not responsible for the crime, adding that the responses at issue were factual information available on public websites rather than encouragement of illegal activity. OpenAI also said it continues to strengthen safeguards to detect harmful intent, limit misuse and respond when safety risks arise.

The shooting at Florida State’s main campus in Tallahassee took place on April 17, 2025. Ikner has pleaded not guilty to murder and attempted murder charges, and his criminal trial is expected later in 2026. The civil case now overlaps with a separate criminal investigation already opened by Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier, whose office sent criminal subpoenas to OpenAI last month, according to Bloomberg Law.

For AI companies, the case could become a defining test of how far negligence and product-liability theories can reach when a chatbot is accused of enabling violence. The central question is whether a system built to generate text can be treated as a contributing actor when a user turns a prolonged conversation into a real-world attack.