OpenAI Faces 30 New Lawsuits Over Canada School Shooting, Accused of Choosing Silence Over Safety
Students, teachers and a principal from Tumbler Ridge are suing OpenAI in California, claiming the company knew its chatbot was being used to plan violence and said nothing.
Key points
- Thirty new lawsuits were filed in a California federal court on Wednesday against OpenAI and CEO Sam Altman by students, teachers and a principal connected to the Tumbler Ridge school shooting in Canada.
- The lawsuits claim OpenAI's own automated safety system flagged the alleged shooter's conversations with ChatGPT about gun violence, but the company chose not to alert Canadian authorities.
- OpenAI's chief global affairs officer, Chris Lehane, is named in the suits as being involved in a decision to stay silent over concerns about the company's reputation and finances.
- After the suspect's account was flagged, OpenAI allegedly only "deactivated" it rather than issuing a full ban, which the lawsuits claim allowed the suspect to re-register with a new email address and regain access.
- OpenAI's chief strategy officer, Jason Kwon, has publicly called the lawsuits' claims "false."
Thirty new lawsuits landed on OpenAI's desk this week, and the people filing them are not strangers to tragedy. The students, teachers and principal who were at Tumbler Ridge Secondary School in British Columbia, Canada, at the time of a shooting there are now taking their case to a federal court in California.
The lawsuits, first reported by The Verge AI, follow a separate set of suits filed in April by the victims' families. Both groups make the same core accusation: OpenAI knew something was wrong and did nothing.
What exactly are the lawsuits claiming?
According to the suits, OpenAI's own automated review system, software that scans conversations for dangerous content, flagged chats between the alleged shooter, Jesse Van Rootselaar, and ChatGPT, OpenAI's AI chatbot. Those chats reportedly involved questions about gun violence.
OpenAI's safety team then recommended that the company contact Canadian authorities. The lawsuits allege that Chris Lehane, OpenAI's chief global affairs officer, was part of a decision to stay quiet instead. The reason given, according to the suits, was protecting the company's "reputational and financial standing."
There is a second accusation that may be easier to picture. When the suspect's account was eventually flagged, OpenAI allegedly "deactivated" it rather than blocking the person system-wide. The lawsuits say that let Van Rootselaar simply sign up again with a different email address and keep using the chatbot.
"Providing the Shooter with continued access to this tool constituted substantial assistance in itself," the lawsuits state.
What does OpenAI say?
OpenAI's chief strategy officer, Jason Kwon, pushed back on the lawsuits in a post on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. He called the claims "false" and said it was "completely untrue" to suggest that safety teams are influenced by political or public relations pressures.
OpenAI is also separately facing a lawsuit from the state of Florida, which accuses the company of aiding attackers involved in other mass shootings, including one at Florida State University last year.
Common questions
Does this mean ChatGPT is dangerous to use?
For the vast majority of people, ChatGPT is a general-purpose tool used for writing, learning and everyday tasks. These lawsuits focus on a specific alleged failure to act on flagged content, not on the chatbot itself being inherently unsafe.
What could OpenAI have done differently, according to the lawsuits?
The suits argue the company should have alerted Canadian police when its own safety systems raised the alarm, and should have issued a permanent, system-wide ban rather than a soft account deactivation that the suspect could easily bypass.
