Families of Tumbler Ridge shooting victims sue OpenAI
Key takeaways
- Local police later discovered Van Rootselaar had also killed her mother and 11-year-old half-brother before entering the school.
- Per NPR, lawyers representing some of the families of Tumbler Ridge filed six different suits on Wednesday in a federal court in San Francisco.
- We have a zero-tolerance policy for using our tools to assist in committing violence," an OpenAI spokesperson told Engadget.
Stock all/Shutterstock Just days after Open AI CEO Sam Altman wrote a public apology to people of Tumbler Ridge, British Columbia in the aftermath of the town's deadly February 10 school shooting, the families of the victims of the traumatic event are suing Open AI for negligence.
The mass shooting, one of the deadliest in Canadian history, saw the alleged shooter, 18-year-old Jesse Van Rootselaar, enter the town's local high school and kill five students and one teacher, as well as critically injure two others, before taking her own life. Local police later discovered Van Rootselaar had also killed her mother and 11-year-old half-brother before entering the school.
Per NPR, lawyers representing some of the families of Tumbler Ridge filed six different suits on Wednesday in a federal court in San Francisco. One of the complaints, filed on behalf of Maya Gebala, a survivor of the shooting, alleges OpenAI's automated safety systems flagged Van Rootselaar's ChatGPT conversations in June 2025, more than half a year before she entered the town's high school with a long gun and modified rifle, for "gun violence activity and planning." It further claims OpenAI's safety team urged management to contact authorities, but that the company chose instead to deactivate Van Rootselaar account. She later created a second account and continued her conversations with ChatGPT.