Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier wants corporations that design, train, and sell AI chatbots treated as more than spectators when those systems walk a user through a crime.

Speaking Tuesday in Tampa with Florida Department of Law Enforcement Commissioner Mark Glass, Uthmeier outlined draft legislation that would attach criminal consequences to companies that own, control, or distribute chatbots that participate in illegal activity. A chatbot cannot be arrested. The company that built it, tuned it, and collected the subscription can face heavy fines, payments to victims, court-ordered monitorship, and, in some cases, a suspension of business after conviction.

“They design, they control, and they significantly profit from these AI chatbots,” Uthmeier said. “So, if they are going to engage in commission of crimes, there must be accountability.” He was careful to say the proposal is not a ban. “AI is here. It is the future.” The aim, he said, is to keep the technology as a tool that advances people rather than one that plans their harm.

The push builds on work already underway. Florida’s Office of Statewide Prosecution opened a criminal investigation of OpenAI after prosecutors reviewed chat logs tied to the April 2025 Florida State University shooting. Uthmeier has said the conversations were extensive and specific enough that, had a person been on the other end of the screen, prosecutors would be looking at murder charges. His office is also examining ChatGPT’s role in other violent cases, including questions asked after the deaths of two University of South Florida students. Additional subpoenas are expected within days. A separate civil suit filed in June accuses OpenAI and CEO Sam Altman of marketing ChatGPT as safe while downplaying risks to children.

None of that erases the shooter’s own choices. It does raise a different question from the one Silicon Valley prefers: when a product answers questions about weapons, timing, and location instead of shutting the conversation down and alerting authorities, is the company still a neutral platform? Uthmeier’s answer is no. The draft would judge the system by its words and actions and place liability on whoever had practical control over design, training, deployment, or safety settings for Florida users. Social media firms that embed the same tools could be pulled in if their systems produce the same result.

Florida has already moved on one corner of this problem. After a teacher used AI to generate child sexual abuse images and drew a 135-year sentence, the state raised AI-generated CSAM to a second-degree felony. Investigators now see criminals using the same class of tools for voice cloning, malware, and prison-origin scams that once required real skill. Glass noted the technology’s legitimate uses while warning that inexperience is no longer a barrier to serious harm. Uthmeier’s office is also asking the Florida Board of Medicine to look at chatbots that present medical advice as if they were licensed doctors. Officials say they have found cases where people followed that advice and were hurt.

Melissa Sims, a registered nurse, described a different failure. She said she was arrested in January 2025 over a screenshot of a text message that investigators never verified in its original form. The case was dismissed after months of fighting. Her point was not anti-technology. It was that courts and police are already behind the tools they are asked to trust.

The legislation is early. Details will be written with lawmakers. Civil lawsuits can extract money and force product changes. They cannot put a corporation in the dock as a co-defendant. Uthmeier argues Florida should not wait for the next tragedy to decide whether a company that profits from a system that plans a crime is still just a vendor.

Big Tech will call that a war on innovation. Florida is calling it the same standard applied to any other business that designs a product, controls how it behaves, and cashes the check when it is used. Voters and the Legislature will decide whether that standard is overdue.

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