Overview
- A 37-year-old from Strasbourg was arrested by the RAID on Friday, April 3, after he asked ChatGPT how to get a gun to kill an intelligence agent from the CIA, Mossad, or France’s DGSI.
- U.S. investigators at the FBI detected the exchange and alerted French authorities via Pharos, France’s portal for reporting illegal online content.
- Police searched the man’s home and found no weapon, and prosecutors later dropped the case because the conduct was limited to questions posed to an AI.
- The Strasbourg prosecutor said the man had prior psychiatric issues, and he was involuntarily hospitalized after his custody ended.
- OpenAI states that in very rare cases of serious and imminent danger, AI conversations can be escalated to human review or law enforcement, a policy that helps explain how this alert reached police.