The court cases alleging AI psychological harm have progressed from originally teen suicide, to adult suicide, to one adult murder-suicide, and most recently in the coordinated set of Stacey v. Altman / M.G. v. Altman / Younge v. Altman cases to adult mass shootings. I recently posted about that set of cases regarding the Tumbler Ridge Mass Shooting in Canada, and you can find that post here.
Now another mass-shooting AI chatbot federal case has been brought. On May 10, 2026 the case of Joshi v. OpenAI Foundation, et al. was filed in the Northern District of Florida, concerning the Florida State University shooting in April 2025 in which two were killed and six were wounded.
Like the Stacy/M.G./Younge mass-shooting cases, this new case steps back from the more aggressive allegations of earlier chatbot-user-suicide cases that charge the chatbot with taking a well-adjusted user and turning him or her suicidal. All of Stacy/M.G./Younge and now Joshi avoid alleging the chatbot was the instigator of the mass shooting. Instead, they claim the chatbot and the AI company had a “duty to warn,” that they should have detected from the nature of the chatbot communications that the user was troubled and might be planning violence. The Joshi case does go a little further, suggesting that the chatbot in responding to the user’s questions about topics like gun operation and publicity from past shootings, did aid in the planning of the attack, although it is not alleged that the chatbot suggested the user carry out the attack.
Because of the less aggressive nature of the claims in all the Stacy/M.G./Younge/Joshi cases, in some ways the farthest case toward chatbot-inspired murder of others is still the case of Lyons v. OpenAI Foundation, et al., now pending in the Northern District of California (with a parallel case pending in state court). Although the plaintiff there concedes the chatbot user was already mentally ill, the plaintiff alleges that user’s interactions with the chatbot is what directly led him to kill his mother and then himself.
All these mass-shootings AI cases have just started, and it will likely be a while before anything substantial comes out of them. I will keep you posted.
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Please see the Wombat Collection for a listing of all the AI court cases and rulings.
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