British Columbia sues OpenAI and CEO Sam Altman over alleged failure to warn police about ChatGPT use in school shooting

British Columbia has filed a civil lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, accusing OpenAI and its chief executive, Sam Altman, of failing to alert police that a shooter had used the ChatGPT chatbot to plan a February mass killing at a provincial school. The province alleges that the lack of a warning contributed to the tragedy and seeks monetary damages to support recovery efforts, as well as a court order compelling OpenAI to revise its policies for handling user interactions that could facilitate violence.

The complaint, lodged in San Francisco federal court on Monday, requests that OpenAI implement safeguards to identify and report potentially dangerous content generated through its AI services. By naming the technology company and its leader as defendants, the province aims to hold OpenAI accountable for any negligence in monitoring the misuse of its platform and to prevent similar incidents in the future.