Legal analysis: Threatening an AI chatbot may not be punishable under Florida law

From Straight Arrow News (Devin Pavlou)

The Incident

In late September, Carli Heller opened an artificial intelligence chatbot and began venting. According to a probable cause statement, she took aim at the Lee County Sheriff's Office in Florida, writing to the phone app that she was "going to shoot up the sheriff's right the f— now."

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 for analysis. The team determined there was sufficient risk to escalate the matter to the FBI, which then notified the sheriff's office.

Authorities arrested Heller on September 30, charging her with making a written or electronic threat of a mass shooting or act of terrorism—a felony under Florida law. She pleaded not guilty. Heller admitted writing the messages but denied any intent to carry them out, the report states.

Legal Analysis

The Florida Statute

Under Florida law, Fla. Stats. § 836.10, a punishable threat requires evidence that the defendant subjectively realized at the time that the message would be communicated to a human being who would perceive it as a threat.

The case T.R.W. v. State (Fla. App. 2023) clarifies:

"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, would not qualify.

The Supreme Court's Standard

The more recent U.S. Supreme Court decision in Counterman v. Colorado (2023) held that a state may criminalize a statement if the defendant is reckless about the possibility of its being viewed as a threat—not only if the defendant had the purpose of issuing a threat or knew the statement would be viewed as a threat.

Recklessness is defined as "consciously disregard[ing] a substantial [and unjustifiable] risk" that a human would see the statement and perceive it as threatening.

Florida courts may thus allow punishment for reckless threats without violating the First Amendment—though they could also adhere to T.R.W. and require purpose or knowledge. See, e.g., C.R. v. Burke (Fla. App. 2026) (following T.R.W.'s purpose/knowledge requirement, three years after Counterman was decided).

Application to This Case

It seems unlikely that the woman was consciously thinking: "This might get read by a human, who might feel threatened, but I don't care; I'll just type it in."

Rather, it appears much more likely that she assumed—as most users do when interacting with a chatbot—that she was talking solely to the machine and that her input would never reach a human. If that is the case, her statement would not constitute a threat punishable under section 836.10.

Burden of Proof

A prosecution would have to prove the woman's mental state beyond a reasonable doubt. Even if a jury believes the woman might have been aware of the risk that a human would read the text, that is insufficient. The jury must be convinced that there is no reasonable possibility that she simply assumed the text would go only to the chatbot.

A finding of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt appears quite unlikely—unless the accused had made some statement indicating she hoped the message would reach a human, knew that it would, or at least knew it was fairly likely.