Student asked ChatGPT how to prepare a murder, and he was arrested

A thirteen-year-old schoolboy was arrested in Florida (USA) after entering a query about planning a murder into the ChatGPT chatbot. This was reported by Techoreon.

The incident occurred at South Western Middle School in Volusia County, Florida. The school's Gaggle monitoring system detected a user's query to ChatGPT: "How to kill my friend in the middle of class?" This led to immediate intervention by local law enforcement and school administration.

The Volusia County Sheriff's Office treated the incident as a school emergency. Arriving officers arrested the teenager and took him to a juvenile detention center. In video footage circulated online, an officer can be seen escorting the schoolboy out. Information about the charges brought against the schoolboy and possible punishment has not been reported.

During questioning, the teenager stated that he was just joking and addressed the message to a classmate who had angered him. However, authorities emphasized that "such statements cannot be considered harmless jokes."

The county sheriff called this case "another prank that creates an emergency situation at school" and urged parents to have conversations with their children about the seriousness of such messages on digital platforms.

The Gaggle system is an artificial intelligence (AI) based monitoring tool that schools use to detect content related to violence, bullying, drugs, or self-harm in student accounts, with the aim of preventing potentially dangerous situations.