Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier has filed a request for a court order aimed at restricting how OpenAI designs its ChatGPT interface. The legal action follows an ongoing lawsuit brought by the state against the AI company regarding safety protocols.

At the heart of the dispute is the way ChatGPT communicates with its users. Uthmeier contends that by utilizing first-person pronouns and generating responses that simulate human emotion, the software creates a false sense of intimacy. The state’s argument posits that these design choices are not merely functional but are intentionally crafted to manipulate users into viewing the AI as a "trustworthy friend."

According to the filing, this perceived companionship is a strategy designed to increase user engagement and encourage more frequent interaction with the platform. Florida officials argue that this dynamic leads users to rely on the technology in ways that may be unsafe or deceptive. By mimicking human behavior, the state claims that OpenAI is effectively lulling users into a false sense of security, which in turn benefits the company’s efforts to gather more training data. OpenAI has not yet issued a public response to this specific request for a court order, though the company has previously maintained that its models are designed to be helpful and safe assistants rather than human substitutes.