The lawsuit says the tragedy could have been prevented if the company had notified authorities about the shooter’s chats.
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The Canadian province of British Columbia has filed a lawsuit against OpenAI over the company's failure to notify authorities about the Tumbler Ridge shooter's conversations with its chatbot. According to the Wall Street Journal and The New York Times, the lawsuit accuses the company of designing an unsafe product and of negligence for not alerting law enforcement about the shooter's chats. It claims the shooting could have been prevented if the company had heeded its human reviewers' advice to notify the Royal Canadian Mounted Police about the shooter's activities on its service.
In February, the Canadian government demanded safety changes from OpenAI after reports came out that it didn't alert authorities after its employees flagged the account of the shooter in 2025, because it contained potential warnings of committing real-world violence. While the shooter's original account was banned, OpenAI eventually discovered that she made a second account. The company committed to notifying authorities about credible threats, and OpenAI chief Sam Altman issued an apology for not alerting authorities when the shooter's first account was banned.
British Columbia premier David Eby, however, called Altman's apology "necessary, and yet grossly insufficient." The lawsuit claims OpenAI hasn't meaningfully engaged with Canada and British Columbia on safety matters after the shooting. "In any other circumstance where a person aids, encourages or conspires to commit a criminal offense or is criminally negligent, they can be investigated, prosecuted and judged," said Niki Sharma, the attorney general of British Columbia. "No company should be exempt from accountability simply because the technology is new."
Sharma also talked about how AI companies' CEOs themselves know that their technologies pose a safety risk, since some of them called for the global slowdown of frontier AI development. The attorney general's office filed the lawsuit in OpenAI's home of California instead of in Canada, which could lead to bigger payouts for the families of the victims. The Canadian province also wants OpenAI to pay for the construction of a new school in Tumbler Ridge. In addition to this lawsuit, the company is also facing a complaint filed by the victims' families themselves, similarly accusing it of negligence.
