San Francisco, California - The families of seven victims of the Tumbler Ridge school shooting in Canada are suing OpenAI and Sam Altman, accusing them of not alerting the authorities to the murderer's disturbing ChatGPT interactions.
On February 10, 18-year-old Jesse Van Rootselaar opened fire at a school in Tumbler Ridge, British Columbia, injuring 26 people and killing six more, before turning the gun on herself.
Nearly three months after the attack, the families of those who were injured or died have launched a lawsuit against OpenAI.
The company had banned Rootselaar's ChatGPT account in June 2025, eight months prior to the deadly shooting, over concerns that the account was being used to plan or orchestrate violent activity.
In the lawsuits filed in a federal court in San Francisco on Wednesday, the plaintiffs say that Rootselaar's intentions were known to OpenAI.
Across seven lawsuits, OpenAI and Altman are being accused of negligence, aiding and abetting a mass shooting, product liability, and wrongful death. They also accuse OpenAI of providing Rootselaar instructions on how to return to ChatGPT.
"The fact that Sam and the leadership overruled the safety team, and then children died, adults died, the whole town was ruined, is pretty close to the definition of evil to me," said Jay Edelson, a lawyer representing the families.
The lawsuit is similar to another brought against OpenAI in March by the family of a girl gravely injured in the Tumbler Ridge shooting.
In a letter last week, OpenAI's CEO Sam Altman apologized for a failure to "alert law enforcement."
"The events in Tumbler Ridge are a tragedy," OpenAI said, per the Guardian. "We have a zero-tolerance policy for using our tools to assist in committing violence."