Tumbler Ridge shooting victims file 30 new lawsuits against OpenAI, bringing total to 37
Published · updated · curated by AI Is Going Just Great
Source: theguardian.com ↗
OpenAI over and over has made decisions to hide how dangerous their platform is because they're worried about regulation and public pushback.
Thirty new federal lawsuits were filed Wednesday against OpenAI on behalf of victims of the Tumbler Ridge mass shooting, in which eight people were killed and dozens more wounded — most of them children — at a British Columbia secondary school on February 14, 2026. The suits allege ChatGPT induced 18-year-old shooter Jesse Van Rootselaar to carry out the attack, and that OpenAI's senior leadership was warned about her eight months beforehand by employees who flagged her account as "a credible and specific threat of gun violence against real people." OpenAI banned her account; she created a new one.
The lawsuits accuse OpenAI and CEO Sam Altman of negligence, aiding and abetting a mass shooting, and product liability. Lead plaintiff attorney Jay Edelson named OpenAI's head of global affairs Chris Lehane as one of the executives who received safety team warnings and overruled repeated appeals to notify authorities — a claim OpenAI flatly denies. The 30 new cases follow seven filed in April, and come amid a separate Florida attorney general lawsuit and seven additional suits blaming ChatGPT for acting as a "suicide coach." Altman sent a written apology to the Tumbler Ridge community after the first wave of suits; British Columbia Premier David Eby called it "necessary, and yet grossly insufficient."