From Straight Arrow News (Devin Pavlou):
One morning in late September, Carli Heller opened up an artificial intelligence chatbot and began venting. She took aim at the Lee County Sheriff's Office in Florida, saying she was "going to shoot up the sheriff's right the f— now," she wrote to the phone app, according to a probable cause statement. Heller continued venting a day later, writing that it was "100% LAST CHANCE" and that she "GOT A NEW F—— GUN TODAY."
Anthropic's safety features triggered and sent the chats to its human review team to analyze. The team believed there was a big enough risk to escalate the risk to the FBI, which then notified the sheriff's office. Authorities arrested Heller on Sept. 30, charging her with making a written or electronic threat of a mass shooting or act of terrorism, a felony under Florida law to which she pleaded not guilty.
Heller admitted writing the messages but denied any intent to carry them out, the report says. She pleaded not guilty.
I doubt that this is a punishable threat, at least under the Florida law, Fla. Stats. § 836.10, unless there is evidence that the woman subjectively realized at the time that the message would be communicated to a human being who would perceive it as a threat. T.R.W. v. State (Fla. App. 2023) makes clear that "To prove the commission of a violation of section 836.10, the trier of fact must find that the defendant transmitted a communication for the purpose of issuing a threat, or with knowledge that the communication will be viewed as a threat." Simply typing a prompt into a chatbot, expecting it to be viewed only by the software, wouldn't qualify.
