The B.C. government has filed a lawsuit against artificial intelligence firm OpenAI in California, arguing that one call to Canadian authorities could have stopped the deadly mass shooting at Tumbler Ridge Secondary School.
Attorney General Niki Sharma announced the filing on Sept. 21, saying the province is seeking accountability from OpenAI and those responsible for the company’s strategic decisions.
British Columbia is also seeking to recoup expenses tied to the February shootings that claimed eight lives, including five Grade 7 students and an educational assistant from the secondary school in the small northeastern B.C. community.
Sharma said OpenAI neglected to alert law enforcement about troubling exchanges that took place between the 18-year-old gunman, Jesse Van Rootselaar, and the firm’s AI chatbot ChatGPT.
“In the days and months since the tragedy, we learned about the role that OpenAI and AI chatbots played in leading up to that tragic day,” Sharma said at a Sept. 21 press conference in Vancouver. “OpenAI has confirmed that the conversation between ChatGPT and the shooter was so alarming that it triggered an internal review by OpenAI employees. This threat was not reported to the RCMP and was subsequently dismissed.”
Survivors and witnesses, including students and staff members from Tumbler Ridge Secondary School, are also pursuing separate legal actions against OpenAI.
Lawsuit Details
Sharma said the province is seeking answers from the company on behalf of families and survivors. She said the case also raises questions that the province believes should be examined by the courts.
The province is asking the court to clarify the responsibilities of technology companies when they become aware of credible threats of violence, including what steps they should take when public safety may be at risk.
Sharma noted that the province has not seen the interactions between the shooter and ChatGPT.
“We have asked OpenAI to disclose these chats. They have refused. We should all be asking them why,” she said. “We know in similar cases, AI chatbots have been found to have counselled the person to conduct the crime.”
The Feb. 10 attack began at Van Rootselaar’s family home, where he shot and killed his mother and brother. He then went to the school, where five more people were killed and 27 others wounded before he took his own life.
The province’s lawsuit says “a warning from OpenAI would have reached an RCMP that already engaged with Van Rootselaar; had visited their residence in response to mental health concerns; and had removed firearms” from the home in the past.
The lawsuit filed in U.S. district court in San Francisco lists OpenAI founder and CEO Sam Altman as an individual defendant, along with the company and other entities associated with it.
Altman issued an apology to the residents of Tumbler Ridge earlier this year, saying he was “deeply sorry” his firm did not notify authorities. He has also said the shooter’s account was banned in 2025.
The province’s claim says that rather than permanently banning the shooter’s account, the company merely deactivated it—a measure the province argues proved inadequate in mitigating potential harm, since Van Rootselaar continued using ChatGPT via an alternate account right up until the deadly attack.
The lawsuit does not specify an exact dollar figure, but says it would exceed $75,000.
The plaintiffs are seeking “all damages recoverable under California law, including punitive damages, in amounts to be proven at trial,” along with interest and costs, the lawsuit says.
Sharma said the province is seeking specific damages, including reimbursement for constructing a new high school after the community decided the building where the mass shooting took place would be demolished.
The province is also seeking reimbursement for the deployment of mental health clinicians to the small community.
Filing in California, which is home to several tech giants, presents an opportunity to drive change on AI safety issues, Sharma said, arguing that safety laws have not kept pace with AI technology.
Open AI chief strategy officer Jason Kwon has previously expressed frustration regarding what he described as inaccurate claims made in the lawsuits about his teams and individuals who were not part of the process.
He said in a social media post that the company has teams that work hard to establish privacy and security measures for more than one billion users while balancing that with standards and procedures for determining when to notify law enforcement of potential dangers.
The Canadian Press contributed to this report.
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