Canadian province sues OpenAI over ChatGPT-related hacker warnings | Court Affairs

The lawsuit alleges that OpenAI ignored calls to alert authorities about ChatGPT attacks linked to a suspected mass shooting.

The Canadian province of British Columbia is planning to sue OpenAI, saying that the US company failed to warn the police after its employees announced the ChatGPT violence related to the person who started it in February. A great shot of Tumbler Ridge.

Attorney General Niki Sharma announced on Tuesday that the province has hired legal teams in British Columbia and California to “explore all legal avenues to hold OpenAI and its decision makers accountable for failing to notify law enforcement authorities of direct threats made by the perpetrator on the company’s ChatGPT platform.”

OpenAI is located in San Francisco, California in the United States.

The move stems from a February 10 attack in the remote Tumbler Ridge community, where authorities say 18-year-old Jesse Van Rootselaar He killed his mother and his father’s brother before going to Tumbler Ridge High School and opening fire.

Five children between the ages of 11 and 13 and one teacher were killed at the school. Twenty-seven other people were injured before Van Rootselaar died in what police described as a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

In a wordsSharma’s office said internal reports from OpenAI showed that its security teams had revealed that the attacker “had committed violent acts on ChatGPT months before the incident, but the company’s management did not inform the police or authorities”.

“When there is serious concern that an opportunity to prevent an accident was missed, we have a responsibility to take action,” Sharma said.

The announcement comes three months after the families of seven victims filed a lawsuit in California against OpenAI and its CEO, Sam Altman, on behalf of five people killed and two injured in the shooting.

Their lawyers said in a release the news that in June 2025, about eight months before the Tumbler Ridge mass shooting, the company “announced and suspended the perpetrator’s ChatGPT account for ‘disturbing activities’ that allegedly included discussing and planning violent events”.

They added, however, that despite 12 different OpenAI employees “begging” the company to inform the police about the attacker’s plans, nothing was done.

OpenAI told Canada media in February it blocked the account after it was suspended and considered referring it to the police, but decided against it because the incident did not present an “imminent and definite risk of harm to others”.

Altman later published an apology in a local newspaper, saying he was deeply sorry that the company had not spoken to authorities before the shooting.

“I am very sorry that we did not alert the law enforcement authorities about the account that was blocked in June,” he said. he wrote in Tumbler RidgeLines. “While I know words may not be enough, I believe an apology is necessary to acknowledge the hurt and irreparable loss your community has suffered.”

The district’s case will be separate from the victim’s case.