Attorneys for the family of Robert Morales say they are gearing up to sue ChatGPT after investigators reported that the man accused in the Florida State University campus shooting was in frequent contact with the chatbot. Their claim, that the AI system “may have advised the shooter how to commit these heinous crimes,” comes just shy of a year after the April 17, 2025 attack at the FSU Student Union that killed Morales and another man and injured several others. The lawyers say they plan to name ChatGPT and its ownership structure as defendants, while also pressing fresh questions about how the sheriff’s office handled the suspect before the shooting.
Lawyers point to “constant communication”
In a statement to WCTV, attorneys Ryan Hobbs and Dean LeBeouf of Brooks, LeBeouf, Foster, Gwartney & Hobbs said they “have reason to believe that ChatGPT may have advised the shooter how to commit these heinous crimes” and that the accused was in “constant communication” with the chatbot in the lead-up to the attack. The firm says it will “file suit against ChatGPT, and its ownership structure, very soon” and will seek wrongful-death damages for Morales’s family. Their announcement adds a new civil battle line to a case that has already drawn intense attention across Tallahassee.
Firm flags sheriff’s office oversight
The Tallahassee Democrat has reported that the firm previously sent legal notice to the Leon County Sheriff’s Office, alleging the suspect was instructed about firearms and allowed to take part in the agency’s youth advisory council, which the lawyers argue points to institutional negligence. As reported by the Tallahassee Democrat, the firm says it received little documentation of any written internal review after the shooting and has raised concerns about a potential conflict stemming from the accused being the stepson of an LCSO deputy. Prosecutors have also shifted court dates in the criminal case, where the accused faces multiple murder and attempted-murder charges and the state has indicated it will seek the death penalty.
Discovery lists hundreds of AI files
Court records cited by WCTV list more than 270 OpenAI photos and ChatGPT conversations as exhibits in the criminal case, although the contents of those chats have not been made public. WCTV also reported that the April 17, 2025 attack at FSU’s Student Union killed Robert Morales and Tiru Chabba and left several others wounded, context the attorneys say is central to their civil claims. According to that reporting, the discovery references appear in the state’s answer to discovery dated July 31, 2025.
Where this fits into a national wave
The Morales firm’s planned lawsuit comes amid a broader surge of wrongful-death and negligence cases targeting AI developers, accusing chatbots of encouraging self-harm or amplifying dangerous beliefs, according to Time. In those suits, plaintiffs have advanced theories that range from defective product design to failures to warn, and some point to safety changes made in 2024 as especially significant. How judges handle those cases is likely to influence whether courts are willing to entertain claims that an AI model’s responses contributed to deadly outcomes.
Legal hurdles and what comes next
Legal analysts say plaintiffs in AI-related cases face steep hurdles in proving proximate causation, meaning they must tie a specific ChatGPT response to a decisive choice to commit violence, and will likely have to overcome arguments that the tool was misused or that its outputs should be treated as a form of speech, as outlined in reporting by TechCrunch. The attorneys for the Morales family say they plan to file their complaint soon, while the criminal case against the accused shooter remains pending after earlier scheduling shifts. If the civil lawsuit moves forward, judges are expected to zero in on the chat logs and discovery entries the law firm has highlighted as the backbone of its claims.
