Tumbler Ridge School Shooting Victims Hit OpenAI With 30 Lawsuits

OpenAI is facing a massive new wave of legal trouble after victims and survivors of the tragic February 10 attack at Tumbler Ridge Secondary School in BC, Canada, have filed 30 new lawsuits against the AI giant in a California federal court.

The tragedy had left eight people dead, including six children, alongside the 18-year-old shooter. The lawsuits claim the company behind ChatGPT failed to take action that could have prevented the mass shooting.

According to CBC News, the law firm representing the plaintiffs, Edelson PC, alleges that OpenAI’s internal safety staff repeatedly urged leadership to alert law enforcement about shooter Jesse Van Rootselaar. Eight months before the tragedy, safety investigators flagged the shooter’s ChatGPT activity, which allegedly detailed violent scenarios.

Legal filings show that those internal warnings were overruled by Chris Lehane, OpenAI’s head of global affairs. The documents allege that executives ignored their own safety team’s appeals to call the police, while simultaneously taking extra security precautions at OpenAI’s own corporate offices after receiving threats against staff.

Plaintiffs accuse the company of putting corporate growth ahead of public safety as it works toward an initial public offering. “The survivors, students, teachers, and parents alike, are living with physical and psychological injuries that will never fully heal,” states one of the filed complaints.

OpenAI executive Jason Kwon has responded to the legal action in a public statement on X, denying the accusations made against specific leaders. “It is absolutely false to say Chris Lehane was involved with our original referral decision, or that our investigators report to him in any way,” Kwon wrote.

“It’s also completely untrue to say that the people at the center of these challenging decisions do not prioritize safety, or that there are ‘political’ or ‘public relations’ factors at play.” Kwon added that company safety teams continuously work to identify potential signs of violence while balancing the privacy of more than one billion user accounts.

Lawyers for the victims say an apology is not enough. They are asking the court to order the release of the complete chat logs between the shooter and ChatGPT, as well as internal corporate records showing why authorities were never notified.