{"id":21678,"date":"2026-04-29T15:17:11","date_gmt":"2026-04-29T15:17:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/21678\/"},"modified":"2026-04-29T15:17:11","modified_gmt":"2026-04-29T15:17:11","slug":"tumbler-ridge-families-sue-openai-for-not-alerting-police-to-the-suspects-chatgpt-activity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/21678\/","title":{"rendered":"Tumbler Ridge families sue OpenAI for not alerting police to the suspect\u2019s ChatGPT activity"},"content":{"rendered":"

Seven families of victims injured or killed in the Tumbler Ridge school shooting in Canada have filed lawsuits against OpenAI<\/a> and CEO Sam Altman, accusing the company and its leadership of negligence after they failed to alert police to the suspected shooter\u2019s ChatGPT activity. The families allege OpenAI stayed silent after its systems flagged activity by shooting suspect Jesse Van Rootselaar in order to protect the company\u2019s reputation and upcoming initial public offering (IPO).<\/p>\n

The Wall Street Journal reports<\/a> that OpenAI \u201cconsidered\u201d flagging the 18-year-old\u2019s activity to police, which reportedly involved conversations about gun violence, but ultimately decided against it. The lawsuits accuse OpenAI of lying about its move to \u201cban\u201d Van Rootselaar, as the company allegedly only deactivated the suspect\u2019s account, who later created a new one under another email:<\/p>\n

When OpenAI was later forced to disclose that the Shooter created a new account, it told a second lie: it claimed they must have \u201cevaded\u201d the company\u2019s safeguards to create one. But there were no safeguards to evade. The Shooter simply followed OpenAI\u2019s own instructions to create a new account after being banned. The \u201csafeguards\u201d OpenAI pointed to after the attack did not fail; they did not exist.<\/p>\n

The families also claim GPT-4o\u2019s \u201cdefective\u201d design played a part in the mass shooting. Last year, OpenAI rolled back its GPT-4o update<\/a> after finding it to be \u201coverly flattering or agreeable \u2014 often described as sycophantic.\u201d They\u2019re also suing OpenAI and Atlman for wrongful death, as well as aiding and abetting a mass shooting.<\/p>\n

Altman apologized to the Tumbler Ridge community last week. \u201cI am deeply sorry that we did not alert law enforcement to the account that was banned in June,\u201d Altman said<\/a>. \u201cGoing forward, our focus will continue to be on working with all levels of government to help ensure something like this never happens again.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Seven families of victims injured or killed in the Tumbler Ridge school shooting in Canada have filed lawsuits…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":21679,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[24,66,157,2819],"class_list":{"0":"post-21678","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-openai","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-openai","11":"tag-policy"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21678","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21678"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21678\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21679"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21678"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21678"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21678"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}