'ChatGPT Told Gunman Targeting Children Gets More Media Attention': FSU Shooting Victim's Widow Sues OpenAI

A mass shooting rocked Florida State University in April 2025. Two university employees, Robert Morales and Tiru Chabba, were killed, while six others were injured in an attack that lasted nearly three minutes inside the Student Union building.

Now, Vandana Joshi, the widow of Chabba, is suing OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, for allegedly helping the killer, 20-year-old student Phoenix Ikner, carry out the attack.

The lawsuit comes after state authorities disclosed that ChatGPT provided the shooter with information about the time and location on campus that would yield the maximum number of victims. According to The Associated Press, the AI platform also provided information about firearms and ammunition. Authorities also allege the shooter was told such an attack could receive more media attention if children were involved.

“OpenAI knew this would happen. It’s happened before and it was only a matter of time before it happened again,” Joshi said on May 11.

The federal lawsuit alleges that OpenAI should have built ChatGPT with safeguards that could alert law enforcement in situations requiring investigation “to prevent a specific plan for imminent harm to the public.”

OpenAI’s valuation reportedly reached $852 billion following a massive $122 billion funding round completed in March 2026.

In an official statement, OpenAI called the incident a “terrible crime” but said it was not involved in any wrongdoing.

“In this case, ChatGPT provided factual responses to questions with information that could be found broadly across public sources on the internet, and it did not encourage or promote illegal or harmful activity,” Drew Pusateri, a spokesperson for the company, said in an email to The Associated Press.

In April 2025, Florida’s Attorney General Ashley Moody launched a criminal investigation into ChatGPT to determine whether it offered any advice to Ikner.

Ikner, who was shot in the jaw by campus police and taken into custody, pleaded not guilty to two counts of first-degree murder and several counts of attempted murder. Florida prosecutors announced in June 2025 that they would seek the death penalty.

Authorities said a Glock 21 handgun belonging to his stepmother, a Leon County Sheriff’s deputy, was used in the attack. A shotgun also found at the scene had not been fired.

Investigators said Ikner had previously expressed white supremacist and far-right views and was removed from a political group at Tallahassee State College. Authorities said he had asked ChatGPT about the busiest times at the Student Union.

Tiru Chabba, 45, was a regional vice president at Aramark Collegiate Hospitality, while Robert Morales, 57, served as the campus dining director.

"OpenAI put their profits over our safety and it killed my husband. They need to be responsible before another family has to go through this,” Joshi said in a statement released by her lawyer.

According to the AP, a growing number of lawsuits in recent years have sought damages from AI and tech companies over the alleged influence of chatbots and social media platforms on users’ mental health.

In March 2026, a jury in Los Angeles found both Meta and YouTube liable for harms to children using their services. In New Mexico, a jury determined that Meta knowingly harmed children’s mental health and concealed what it knew about child sexual exploitation on its platforms.