Description: After the 02/10/2026 school shooting in Tumbler Ridge, British Columbia, OpenAI said a user later identified as the suspect, Jesse Van Rootselaar, had previously used ChatGPT to describe scenarios involving gun violence. Those chats were reportedly auto-flagged and reviewed and the account was banned, but OpenAI says it did not alert the RCMP because it allegedly did not present a credible, imminent threat; the company reportedly contacted police after the attack.
Editor Notes: Included for the reported AI-mediated flagging and escalation process. Available reporting suggests the suspect's ChatGPT interactions were flagged by automated systems and reviewed by personnel, and that the associated account was later suspended. The same reporting indicates OpenAI did not notify law enforcement at the time, citing its internal threshold for a credible, imminent risk of serious harm.
Entities
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Incident ID
1375
Report Count
3
Incident Date
2026-02-10
Editors
Daniel Atherton
Incident Reports
Reports Timeline
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Months before Jesse Van Rootselaar became the suspect in the mass shooting that devastated a rural town in British Columbia, Canada, OpenAI considered alerting law enforcement about her interactions with its ChatGPT chatbot, the company sai…
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Canadian officials have summoned leaders from OpenAI for a meeting following revelations that the company did not inform the authorities about a user whose account had been suspended months before she committed a mass murder in British Colu…
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Ann M. O'Leary, OpenAI post-incident response
February 26, 2026
From: Ann M. O’Leary Vice President of Global Policy OpenAI
To: The Honourable Evan Solomon, P.C., M.P. Minister of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Innovation House of Commons Ottawa, Ontario K1A 0A6 Canada
CC: The Hono…
Variants
A "variant" is an AI incident similar to a known case—it has the same causes, harms, and AI system. Instead of listing it separately, we group it under the first reported incident. Unlike other incidents, variants do not need to have been reported outside the AIID. Learn more from the research paper.
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