Tumbler Ridge mass shooting victims file 30 new lawsuits against OpenAI
The company says it prioritizes safety, but suits allege its ChatGPT bot induced shooter to carry out attack in Canada OpenAI faces 30 new lawsuits filed on behalf of victims of the Tumbler Ridge mass shooting. The suits, filed on Wednesday, allege the company’s ChatGPT chatbot induced the shooter to carry out the attack in rural Canada in February, in which eight people were killed and dozens more wounded – most of them children. “These were people who really endured just total hell that day,” Jay Edelson, the lead lawyer representing the plaintiffs, said in an interview. “Young kids who watched their teachers die, watched friends die and thought they were going to get shot and killed.” These new lawsuits, filed in federal court for the northern district of California, come after Edelson filed seven initial suits in April – bringing the total number of cases against OpenAI for the Tumbler Ridge shooting to 37. OpenAI banned her account, but she was able to quickly create a new one, the suits claim.
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Employees on the company’s safety team had flagged the shooter’s account to executives eight months before the attack, describing her in internal messages as “a credible and specific threat of gun violence against real people”, according to court filings. He said Lehane was one of the people who received warnings from the company’s safety team but overruled repeated appeals to alert the authorities.
