BC Family Sues OpenAI Over Ignored Shooter Warnings

In the remote northern British Columbia community of Tumbler Ridge, the family of a 12-year-old girl critically wounded in a February mass shooting has filed a civil lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging the artificial intelligence company ignored internal warnings about the shooter's violent intentions months before the attack.

The lawsuit, filed on March 9 in British Columbia Supreme Court by Cia Edmonds on behalf of herself and her daughters Maya and Dahlia Gebala, claims OpenAI employees identified risks from the shooter's interactions with ChatGPT but failed to alert Canadian authorities. On February 10, 18-year-old Jesse Van Rootselaar killed her mother and 11-year-old half-brother at their home before proceeding to Tumbler Ridge Secondary School. There, she fatally shot five students aged 12 to 13 and an educational assistant, then took her own life. Eight people died in total, marking one of the deadliest mass shootings in Canadian history. Two students survived with injuries, including Maya Gebala, who was shot three times at close range while trying to lock a library door to protect classmates.

Maya remains hospitalized at BC Children's Hospital in Vancouver, where she has...