After a school shooting in Canada’s Tumbler Ridge that killed five children and an educator, families of victims have turned to OpenAI, arguing in a U.S. federal lawsuit that the company should have warned police after the shooter used its ChatGPT chatbot. The lawsuit, filed Wednesday in federal court, is seeking to hold OpenAI liable over what the families describe as missed opportunities to escalate alarming online interactions to law enforcement.
The complaint filed on behalf of 12-year-old Maya Gebala, who was critically injured in the Feb. 10 attack, is among what the plaintiffs’ attorney said are the first of dozens of cases families in Tumbler Ridge are planning. In an interview, attorney Jay Edelson said decisions made by OpenAI and its chief executive, Sam Altman, “have destroyed the town.” He added that “The people are really resilient, but what happened is unimaginable,” as the town mourns deaths tied to the shooting and the chatbot-related claims made in the lawsuit.
Authorities have said the shooter killed her mother and her 11-year-old stepbrother in their home on Feb. 10 before opening fire at Tumbler Ridge Secondary School, killing five children and an educator before killing herself. Authorities said 25 people were also injured in the attack, which Canadian officials have described as Canada’s deadliest mass shooting in years.
In the lawsuit, the families accuse OpenAI of negligence, and the Gebala case also accuses the company of “aiding and abetting a mass shooting,” according to the AP reporting. Along with damages, the lawsuit seeks a court order that would require OpenAI to ban users from ChatGPT if their accounts were deactivated for violent misuse and require the company to alert law enforcement when its systems identify someone as posing a “real-world risk of violence.”
OpenAI responded by saying the events in Tumbler Ridge were a tragedy and that it has a “zero-tolerance policy for using our tools to assist in committing violence.” In a written statement, the company said it has already strengthened safeguards, including improving how ChatGPT responds to signs of distress, connecting people with local support and mental health resources, strengthening how it assesses and escalates potential threats of violence, and improving detection of repeat policy violators.
The new lawsuit arrives after Altman sent a letter last week apologizing to the community, saying OpenAI did not notify law enforcement about the shooter’s online behavior. In the letter, posted Friday, Altman said he was “deeply sorry that we did not alert law enforcement to the account that was banned in June,” and wrote that “While I know words can never be enough, I believe an apology is necessary to recognize the harm and irreversible loss your community has suffered.”
Edelson, a Chicago-based lawyer known for pursuing high-profile cases involving the tech industry, said the dispute does not involve a passive tool. “This is not a passive technology,” Edelson said, comparing chatbot interactions with a more conventional online search for information. He said that for people who are mentally ill, “the chatbot will validate what they’re saying and then amplify what they’re saying.”
The AP report says Edelson visited Tumbler Ridge and met with dozens of people at a visitor center, and later visited Gebala at a children’s hospital in Vancouver, where she remains hospitalized and appeared alert but unable to speak. The lawsuit filings also identify the shooting victims whose families are plaintiffs: Zoey Benoit, Abel Mwansa Jr., Ticaria “Tiki” Lampert and Kylie Smith, all 12, and Ezekiel Schofield, 13, along with education assistant Shannda Aviugana-Durand.
In its account of events before the killings, OpenAI said it had flagged the shooter’s account last June as being used to discuss violence against other people. The company said it considered whether to refer the account to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police but determined at the time that the activity did not meet a threshold for referral to law enforcement. OpenAI said it banned the account in June for violating its usage policy.
The plaintiffs’ case also alleges that the deaths may have been prevented if OpenAI had been forthcoming. The lawsuit papers, according to the AP report, allege “the victims didn’t learn this because OpenAI was forthcoming, but because its own employees leaked it to The Wall Street Journal after they could no longer stomach the company’s silence.” British Columbia Premier David Eby responded to Altman’s apology on social media, saying it was “necessary, and yet grossly insufficient for the devastation done to the families of Tumbler Ridge.”
The Gebala lawsuit contends that OpenAI’s actions and inaction were tied to the harm, and it seeks court orders focused on restricting violent-use accounts and escalating identified risks. The AP report also says an earlier case was filed in a court in British Columbia, and that lawyers in both countries are seeking to bring the affiliated case to San Francisco, where OpenAI is headquartered.