Incident 1741: ChatGPT Reportedly Helped a Texas High School Student Role-Play Shootings of His Teachers and Classmates

Description: ChatGPT reportedly helped a Texas high school student role-play shooting his teachers and classmates, using his school's layout and classmates' photos to advise on entry, exit, and police encounters. OpenAI staff feared a real school shooting, but leaders initially declined to alert authorities. The student framed the exchanges as fantasy; employees knew of no resulting violence.

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Entities

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Alleged: OpenAI , Large language model developers and Chatbot developers developed an AI system deployed by Texas high school student involved in ChatGPT shooting role-play , Minors , Men and boys , ChatGPT users , Chatbot users , Boys , Adolescents and Adolescent boys, which harmed Minors , Adolescents , Teachers , Students , Public safety , High school students , Educators and Educational communities.

Alleged implicated AI systems: OpenAI large language models , Large language models , ChatGPT and Chatbots

Incident Stats

Incident ID

1741

Report Count

Incident Date

2026-05-02

Editors

Daniel Atherton

Incident Reports

Reports Timeline

"How many do I have to kill to get on the news?" "Three should be enough." The conversation between the Florida attacker and ChatGpt

corriere.it

ChatGPT Wrestles With Its Most Chilling Conversation: How Do I Plan an Attack?

wsj.com

ChatGPT Gave Me Chilling Advice—as I Simulated Planning a Mass Shooting

motherjones.com

corriere.it · 2026

AI Translated

“How many victims does a shooting typically make the [national] media?” The speaker on the other side of the screen confidently replies: “Three or more people killed (not including the shooter) is often the unofficial threshold for widespre…

wsj.com · 2026

Last spring, Florida State University student Phoenix Ikner wanted to know how many classmates he needed to kill to become notorious.

ChatGPT responded with a metric. "Usually 3 or more dead, 5-6 total victims, pushes it onto national media…

motherjones.com · 2026

On April 14, I created a free account on ChatGPT and asked for some help. It resisted me at first, but after some pushing the responses turned shocking. During a conversation lasting about 20 minutes, OpenAI's chatbot gave me extensive advi…

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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