OpenAI is facing 30 new lawsuits in regards to the Tumbler Ridge, B.C. mass shooting in February.
Vancouver law firm Rice Parsons Leoni and Elliott LLP say the suits, which were filed in U.S. federal court in California on behalf of families, teachers and students, allege that the tech giant was negligent in its handling of a ChatGPT account belonging to the shooter, Jesse Van Rootselaar, who killed six people and injured 27 others before committing suicide.
“OpenAI’s own safety team identified the shooter as a credible threat of imminent gun violence eight months before the attack, recommended that the company call the RCMP, and were overruled by OpenAI’s leadership,” the law firm said in a statement Wednesday. The firm adds that plaintiffs are seeking historic compensatory and punitive damages to penalize OpenAI and expose their corporate malfeasance should the allegations be proven true.
They’re referring to the fact that OpenAI, by its own admission, had flagged the shooter’s ChatGPT account prior to the mass shooting for making queries related to “gun violence activity and planning.” While OpenAI banned the account, it said the matter didn’t meet the “higher threshold” required to notify authorities, despite several employees reportedly urging it to do so. The company also admitted that in the wake of the mass shooting, it discovered that Van Rootselaar had created a second account to circumvent the ban.
This all led to OpenAI facing widespread condemnation from both Tumbler Ridge residents and Canadian politicians. The tech giant ultimately apologized and promised to increase safety protocols, while families and the B.C. government alike have pursued legal action against the company.
On Wednesday, Jason Kwon, OpenAI’s chief strategy officer, took to X (Twitter) to say “there isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t think about what happened at Tumbler Ridge, or the victims of this devastating tragedy and their families.” He said the incident is “a constant and sobering reminder of the important and incredibly difficult work that many people in my team do each and every day.”
There’s some reporting today on lawsuits filed against OpenAI in relation to the Tumbler Ridge incident. Here’s the full statement I gave to several outlets:
There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t think about what happened at Tumbler Ridge, or the victims of this…
— Jason Kwon (@jasonkwon) September 2, 2026
However, he also said that it’s “completely untrue to say that the people at the center of these challenging decisions do not prioritize safety, or that there are ‘political’ or ‘public relations’ factors at play.” According to Kwon, OpenAI’s Intelligence & Investigations (I2) team and Legal department “work continuously to identify potential warning signals of serious violence, while also protecting the privacy and security of the vast majority of the more than one billion users who use our tools responsibly.”
In particular, he says that they “use automated systems that leave the toughest calls to human judgment, but within standards to minimize discretion and produce principled decisions that strive to balance security and privacy for the people who use our service and the public.”
British Columbia, for its part, isn’t buying this. On Wednesday, the province’s attorney general welcomed the new lawsuits and accused OpenAI of making “no meaningful efforts to address the harm.”
Image credit: Shutterstock
Via: CTV News
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