British Columbia has sued OpenAI and chief executive Sam Altman in federal court in San Francisco, alleging that failures in the company’s safety systems contributed to the February school shooting in Tumbler Ridge.
The province’s complaint says OpenAI identified disturbing exchanges involving the attacker, including discussion of gun violence, and deactivated one account without giving law enforcement a warning. It alleges that the user opened another account and continued planning the attack. Nine people were killed, most of them children.
Those are allegations, not judicial findings. OpenAI has said it uses safeguards to prevent harm and works with authorities when it identifies a credible threat. The company will have an opportunity to contest causation, duty and the province’s claimed losses.
British Columbia seeks recovery of public costs associated with the attack as well as changes to safety practices. The case therefore asks more than whether harmful output occurred. It tests when an AI provider’s knowledge of a user’s conduct becomes sufficiently concrete to create a duty to act, and whether a government may recover the costs of responding to violence allegedly enabled by a digital service.
