OpenAI faces lawsuits over deadly mass shooting in Canada

Families of victims of a school shooting in British Columbia in February filed seven lawsuits on Wednesday against OpenAI, the platform’s maker ChatGPT. The lawsuits, filed in federal court in San Francisco, allege that OpenAI’s actions in connection with the shooter’s use of… artificial intelligence He allowed the shooting to happen.

These cases can have major implications for the future chatbot Safeguards and whether companies can be held liable for how people use AI.

The shooting occurred on February 10 when an 18-year-old former student entered a high school in Tumbler Ridge, British Columbia, and opened fire using a modified handgun, killing five children and an educational assistant, according to the British Daily Mail. news Reports. Investigators Allegedly That the shooter killed her mother and half-brother. The combined deaths made this one of the deadliest shooting incidents in Canadian history. The shooter died at the scene, apparently from self-inflicted wounds.

The shooter had engaged ChatGPT in violent conversations prior to the attack.

OpenAI says it has taken steps aimed at addressing the issues raised by the lawsuits.

“We have already strengthened our safeguards, including improving how ChatGPT responds to signs of distress, connecting people to local support and mental health resources, enhancing how we assess and escalate potential threats of violence, and improving the detection of repeat policy violators,” an OpenAI spokesperson told CNET in an email.

OpenAI co-founder and CEO Sam Altman He wrote a letter for families, which was published on the local news site Tumbler RidgeLines.

“The pain your community has suffered is unimaginable,” Altman wrote.

He referred to the shooter’s ChatGPT account, writing: “I am deeply sorry that we did not alert law enforcement to the account that was banned in June.”

CBS News reports That the shooter’s account was flagged in 2025 for abusing ChatGPT for “violent activities” and then banned. OpenAI told CBS it considered reporting the account to law enforcement but decided it “does not pose an imminent and reasonable risk of serious physical harm to others.”

according to The GuardianThe shooter was able to create a second account, which OpenAI was not aware of until after the shooting.

More issues for OpenAI

These aren’t the only legal and regulatory challenges OpenAI faces with its AI chat products. Earlier in April, Florida officials announced OpenAI was investigating whether the shooter who killed two people at Florida State University in Tallahassee had used ChatGPT in connection with the attack.

Separately, A He walks lawsuit The lawsuit filed by Merriam-Webster and Encyclopedia Britannica says OpenAI improperly used copyrighted materials to train its AI systems.

(Disclosure: Ziff Davis, CNET’s parent company, sued OpenAI in 2025, alleging that it infringed Ziff Davis’s copyrights in training and operating its AI systems.)

The company also navigates a series of product and business stresses, including… Close generative video model, Sora And stop working on Adult mode for ChatGPT.

And it might as well It faced scrutiny from investors After missing some internal revenue and user growth goals ahead of a potential public offering.

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