The family of a child critically injured one of Canada’s worst mass shootings is suing OpenAI, arguing the technology company could have prevented the attack on a school last month.
The lawsuit comes days after the head of OpenAI said he would apologize to the families of a remote Canadian town after violence shattered the tight-knit community.
Eight people – including five school students, aged 12 to 13, and a 39-year-old teaching assistant – were killed by an 18-year-old shooter in the mountain town of Tumbler Ridge on 10 February.
It later emerged that the shooter, Jesse Van Rootselaar, who died of a self-inflicted injury, had described violent scenarios involving guns to ChatGPT over several days in June, which an automated review system flagged, according to the Wall Street Journal.
But OpenAI, which owns the chatbot, said it felt the account activity did not identify “credible or imminent planning” and so banned Van Rootselaar’s account, but did not notify authorities in Canada. The company later said it found a second account linked to the shooter after the first was suspended.
On Monday, Cia Edmonds filed a lawsuit against the company on behalf of herself and her two daughters, Maya and Dahlia Gebala, both of whom were present during the shooting.
“The purpose of this lawsuit is to learn the whole truth about how and why the Tumbler Ridge mass shooting happened, to impose accountability, to seek redress for harms and losses, and to help prevent another mass-shooting atrocity in Canada,” the law firm Rice Parsons Leoni & Elliott LLP, which is representing the family, said in a statement.
The allegations have not been tested in court.
Maya, 12, was shot three times. One bullet entered her head above her left eye and another hit her neck. A third bullet grazed her cheek and part of her ear, the lawsuit says.
She remains in hospital after suffering a catastrophic traumatic brain injury, permanent cognitive and physical disability, right-sided hemiplegia, scarring and physical deformities, according to the claim.
Both Edmonds and her daughter Dahlia, who was not injured physically in the shooting, have experienced PTSD, anxiety, depression and sleep disturbances.
Edmonds’ civil claim alleges ChatGPT was rushed to market by OpenAI without adequate safety studies. The family is seeking undisclosed punitive damages, saying the company’s conduct “is reprehensible and morally repugnant” to both the plaintiffs and the “community at large”.
Last week, OpenAI’s CEO, Sam Altman, met virtually with the British Columbia premier, David Eby, and Darryl Krakowka, the mayor of Tumbler Ridge, amid mounting frustration that the tech giant’s existing policies did not require it to report violent content to police.
“Everybody on the call recognized that an apology is nowhere near sufficient, but also that it is completely necessary,” Eby said. “And the mayor of Tumbler Ridge is going to work with OpenAI to make sure that any public…
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