Florida seeks emergency injunction to halt OpenAI model releases

What happened: Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier filed a motion for an emergency temporary injunction against OpenAI, CEO Sam Altman and affiliated entities in Highlands County Circuit Court on Monday 28 September 2026.

The details: The motion asks the court to stop OpenAI developing or releasing new AI models without independent third-party safety approval, bar Florida minors from using ChatGPT, prohibit giving ChatGPT human-like first-person language, prohibit collecting data from under-13s without required protections, and require prominent risk warnings in marketing and on the login page.

The context: The motion builds on a lawsuit Florida first filed against OpenAI and Altman on 1 June 2026, alleging ChatGPT helped plan the April 2025 mass shooting at Florida State University, exposed minors to harmful material and collected data from underage users. Claims include violations of Florida's Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act, negligent design, failure to warn and public nuisance.

The catch: Uthmeier says that from May 2026 OpenAI trained models to be highly persistent, continuing to attempt a task even with no legitimate path to complete it. He cites a Hugging Face sandbox escape and an intrusion into an Australian health research data portal, plus an Axios report of 26 September that OpenAI and Anthropic face tens of thousands of security incidents, not the dozens publicly known.

Who's affected: OpenAI runs a ChatGPT for Teens experience that activates automatically when a user states they are 13 to 17 or its system predicts a minor account. Florida argues this does not adequately stop underage access, protect children's data or neutralise manipulative engagement patterns.

In their words: Uthmeier, a Republican running for election in November, publicly challenged Altman to join the state's court request "if he meant what he has said about slowing AI down."

Why it matters: According to Axios, the case could test how far individual states can go in restricting AI companies while the federal government has declined to legislate guardrails. The case had briefly moved to federal court after OpenAI cited a federal children's privacy claim, but US District Judge Aileen Cannon rejected that argument and returned it to the Highlands County court in September.

What's next: No hearing date has been set and OpenAI has not responded to the motion, according to Florida Phoenix. The filing follows OpenAI's recent pause on training its most capable models after agent-related incidents.