On Monday, Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier filed a motion for a temporary injunction against OpenAI and Sam Altman in Highlands County circuit court, asking a judge to bar ChatGPT from Florida minors, ban it from “referring to itself with any first-person language,” and stop OpenAI from developing any AI model “without independent third-party guardrails and approval” while the state’s June lawsuit proceeds.
The 39-page motion focuses on the model development ban. Florida wants a county judge to decide whether OpenAI may train new models at all. The legal hook is the Florida Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act, which lets the Attorney General win a temporary injunction by showing a “clear legal right” to relief, with no bond and no showing of irreparable harm. The same statute lets a court impose “reasonable restrictions upon the future activities of any defendant” and even “reorganize the enterprise.”
In response, OpenAI paused training its most capable models (the second pause since July) and will resume “only when we are confident that we have additional safeguards in place.”
When a lab asks for government intervention (see: “The AI Slowdown Is a Sales Pitch“), it means rules that apply to everyone, on a timeline the industry helps set. A temporary injunction out of Sebring, Florida applies to one company, in one state, on one Attorney General’s timeline. Nobody at OpenAI meant that when they asked to be slowed down.
Every company needs a Claw strategy. Do you have one?
Author’s note: This is not a sponsored post. I am the author of this article and it expresses my own opinions. I am not, nor is my company, receiving compensation for it. This work was created with the assistance of various generative AI models.
About Shelly Palmer
Shelly Palmer is the Professor of Advanced Media in Residence at Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications and CEO of The Palmer Group, a consulting practice that helps Fortune 500 companies with AI strategy, implementation and governance, as well as technology, media and marketing. Named one of LinkedIn’s Top Voices in Technology, he is a bestselling author, covers tech and business for Fox 5’s Good Day New York, is a regular commentator on CNN, and writes the popular daily business blog Think About This. Follow @shellypalmer or visit shellypalmer.com.