Source: The Guardian

British Columbia has filed a lawsuit in the US federal court in San Francisco naming OpenAI and its CEO, Sam Altman, as defendants and seeking damages to fund recovery efforts as well as an order requiring changes to how ChatGPT conversations that could lead to violence are handled. The province alleges that nine people, primarily children, were killed in the Tumbler Ridge school shooting on 10 February and that the shooter, Jesse Van Rootselaar, had been flagged by OpenAI’s safety team after conversations about gun violence; according to the complaint, the company did not alert local law enforcement. The suit says Van Rootselaar’s interactions with ChatGPT were first flagged in June 2025, that safety team members recommended contacting police, and that OpenAI leadership, including Altman, overruled that recommendation, citing whistleblowers and reporting in the Wall Street Journal.

The complaint describes concrete harms the province says it has borne: demolition of the school, costs for a replacement school, and mental-health care for the community, and it recounts that one survivor, Maya Gebala, suffered catastrophic brain injuries after being shot three times. The filing follows more than 30 related lawsuits by family members and others in California and comes amid other litigation including a June suit by the state of Florida; OpenAI has said it trains its models to refuse requests that would meaningfully enable violence and that it notifies law enforcement when conversations indicate an “imminent and credible risk,” while a company spokesperson called the Tumbler Ridge attack an unspeakable tragedy. The province’s attorney general, Niki Sharma, is quoted saying residents deserve answers and accountability, and the lawsuit asserts that Altman’s April apology and promised reforms were not followed through despite engagement attempts by British Columbia officials.