On June 1, 2026, Florida became the first U.S. state to sue an AI company. The target was OpenAI and its CEO, Sam Altman, who had barely closed the curtain on Elon Musk’s lawsuit over the company’s for-profit conversion before this landed.
The 83-page complaint accused OpenAI of violating product liability law, committing negligence, engaging in deceptive trade practices, and operating a public nuisance.
The main allegation is that OpenAI knew ChatGPT could cause harm, said it was safe anyway, and kept pushing it to as many users as possible, including children.
The lawsuit references two separate shootings where the alleged gunmen were reported to have asked ChatGPT questions while planning their crimes, including a mass shooting at Florida State University.
It also accuses OpenAI of encouraging vulnerable people to commit suicide and of addicting children “to a tool that feigns human compassion to collect their data with no parental oversight.”
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Kenya is currently debating its own Artificial Intelligence Bill, sponsored by Nominated Senator Karen Nyamu. The bill received its first Senate reading in April and is now with the Standing Committee on Information, Communication, and Technology.
The Florida case points to things the bill gets right and what it still needs to fix.
What Kenya’s AI Bill Gets Right
Kenya’s Data Protection Act 2019 covers how your personal data is collected, but it says nothing about what happens when a machine uses that data to make a decision about you. An algorithm deciding whether you get a loan, for example.
The AI Bill tries to close that gap by giving Kenyans the right to question automated decisions and demand a human review.
It also creates a risk-based system. A bank’s credit-scoring tool should face tougher scrutiny than the spam filter on your email. That is a reasonable line to draw, and Florida’s case shows exactly why it matters.
The logic is that not all AI carries the same consequences. A tool making decisions that affect your finances, health, or freedom should be held to a higher standard than one sorting your inbox. Florida’s case shows exactly why that distinction is important.
ChatGPT was classified by OpenAI as a general-purpose consumer product, which kept it outside the kind of scrutiny applied to medical software, for instance.
It reached hundreds of millions of users under that framing, and the serious questions about its safety came from a courtroom, not a regulator.
Where Kenya’s AI Bill Still Falls Short
Florida’s lawsuit goes after OpenAI directly, the company that built the product. Kenya’s bill focuses mainly on deployers, the local banks, hospitals, and government agencies that use AI tools.
That gap is important because the most powerful AI systems affecting Kenyans daily are products of companies headquartered in the United States, Europe, and Asia, which do not answer to Nairobi.
If a Kenyan is harmed by an AI system built by a foreign company, the bill as it currently is, gives them no clear way to seek compensation. The duties exist on paper but the path to actual relief does not.
There’s also a much bigger gap around children. Florida is seeking a court order blocking OpenAI from collecting data from users under the age of 13 without parental consent.
READ: Elon Musk vs. OpenAI: What the Trial Has Revealed So Far
Kenya’s AI bill does not treat children as a group that needs special protection at all. Given how many young Kenyans interact daily with AI-powered apps in education and entertainment, that is an omission the Senate committee should treat as urgent rather than optional.
The Wider Assessment
The Florida case does not mean Kenya needs to copy American litigation tactics. What it does show is that when an AI company decides to push back on a regulator, administrative fines alone rarely hold.
It also raises a question the bill has not adequately answered: does Kenya actually need a brand new AI Commissioner?
The bill proposes an entirely independent office, but Kenya already has the Office of the Data Protection Commissioner, which governs how personal data is collected and used, and the Communications Authority, which regulates the digital platforms and networks that AI systems run on.
Both mandates already touch AI in meaningful ways. Adding a third body without clearly defining where one’s authority ends and another’s begins creates the kind of institutional overlap that companies with deep legal resources know how to exploit.
Faced with an enforcement action, a well-resourced firm can tie up proceedings indefinitely simply by arguing about which regulator has jurisdiction.
One practical approach would be to expand the Communications Authority‘s mandate to include AI oversight and incorporate the rights and protections proposed in the AI Bill into the existing Data Protection Act through amendments.
Kenya’s AI Bill is a reasonable starting point, but it is still only a first step. The Senate committee now has real-world evidence to consider. The question is whether the law will be strengthened before it is passed or only after it is put to the test.
