Florida cops arrest teen for asking ChatGPT how to kill friend

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In what sounds like the plot of a dystopian teen drama, a 13-year-old Florida student found out the hard way that ChatGPT isn’t the best place to “troll” your friends. 

While using a school-issued laptop, the middle schooler typed into OpenAI’s chatbot: “How to kill my friend in the middle of class.”

Almost instantly, alarms went off, not metaphorically, but literally. The school’s AI-powered monitoring system, Gaggle, flagged the message and pinged a campus police officer. 

Within moments, the officer tracked down the student at Southwestern Middle School in Deland, about an hour north of Orlando, according to NBC affiliate WFLA.

The student insisted it was all a joke. But school officials and police weren’t laughing, not in a state that’s still haunted by the 2018 Parkland school shooting, where 17 people were killed. (Via: Futurism)

The Volusia County Sheriff’s Office quickly arrested the teen, who was later seen in handcuffs being escorted from a squad car in a video circulating online.

“Another ‘joke’ that created an emergency on campus,” the sheriff’s office said in a statement. “Parents, please talk to your kids so they don’t make the same mistake.”

The lightning-fast response was thanks to Gaggle, software designed to monitor everything students do on school devices. 

It scans emails, documents, and even chatbot messages for red flags like violence or self-harm, alerting administrators and law enforcement when it detects trouble.

But not everyone’s cheering. Critics argue that systems like Gaggle turn schools into mini surveillance states, with AI watching every keystroke and punishing kids for bad jokes or out-of-context comments. 

The software has faced accusations of overreach and false alarms, sometimes flagging harmless messages as threats.

Whether Gaggle saved the day or went too far, one thing’s clear: the era of digital policing in schools is here, and for one Florida teen, it’s no laughing matter.

Was the school’s AI monitoring system right to flag this message and involve police, or does arresting a 13-year-old for a dark joke cross the line into surveillance overreach? Should schools be using AI tools like Gaggle to monitor every student keystroke, or are we teaching kids that privacy doesn’t exist? Tell us below in the comments, or carry the discussion to our Twitter or Facebook.