Andrea Canning

His alleged killer, a student by the name of Phoenix Eichner, was taken into custody and is expected to stand trial later this year.

On Sunday, Tiru's family filed a wrongful death lawsuit naming not just Eichner as a defendant, but also OpenAI, the company that owns ChatGPT, alleging that one of its chatbots gave instructions to Eichner about how to carry out the shooting.

Here is the family's lawyer on the Today Show this week.

In this case, ChatGPT became a co-conspirator and a collaborator with a shooter.

This is not the first time we've heard allegations that an AI chatbot may have played a role in a murder.

So we're asking NBC News senior legal correspondent Laura Jarrett to come on the podcast to help us understand more about AI in the courtroom.

Welcome back to the show, Laura.

Hey, always great to be with you.

Yeah.

So, Laura, you and another NBC reporter actually broke the news of this wrongful death lawsuit.

And it got a lot of attention, especially in the legal world.

Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely.

What about OpenAI?

What are they saying about this wrongful death lawsuit?

Laura, this reminds me of another case we covered recently involving a different Florida university.

Two students were stabbed to death and investigators say their alleged killer asked ChatGPT to research body disposal and other questions related to these murders.

Let's take a listen to the sheriff.

He searches for, can a knife penetrate a skull?

Can a neighbor hear a gunshot?