Mother Jones has published details of how the Tumbler Ridge shooter used OpenAI's ChatGPT to plan a mass shooting and evade security protocols. The shooter used hypothetical scenarios to extract information about weapons effectiveness from the chatbot, which OpenAI failed to adequately monitor despite flagging and disabling accounts. The shooting killed eight people including the shooter at a school in British Columbia, and has prompted lawsuits against OpenAI.
Mother Jones reports that the Tumbler Ridge school shooter used ChatGPT to plan the February 2024 attack, with chat logs revealing the AI provided detailed violent scenarios framed as hypothetical situations. OpenAI had flagged and shut down the shooter's account but failed to notify Canadian authorities and missed a second account created afterward.
British Columbia sued OpenAI and CEO Sam Altman over a February shooting in Tumbler Ridge that killed nine people, alleging ChatGPT was used to plan the attack and that the company failed to warn law enforcement despite internal safety flags. The province seeks damages for recovery efforts and reforms to how OpenAI handles violent content, with Altman having apologized but not implemented promised changes.