OpenAI Flagged Jesse Van Rootselaar's ChatGPT Account Months Before Tumbler Ridge Shooting

Tumbler Ridge suspect's ChatGPT account banned before shooting

OpenAI banned a ChatGPT account owned by the suspect of a mass shooting in British Columbia more than half a year before the attack took place. The AI company said they had identified an account owned by Jesse Van Rootselaar in June 2025 under abuse and enforcement detection, which includes identifying accounts being used to further violence. OpenAI said it did not alert authorities to the account because its usage did not meet its threshold of a credible or imminent plan for serious physical harm to others. It said its thoughts were with everyone affected by the tragedy and that following the attack it had "proactively" contacted Canadian police with information on the suspect. Van Rootselaar is suspected of having shot and killed eight people in rural Tumbler Ridge on 12 February in one of the deadliest attacks in Canada's history. According to the Wall Street Journal, which first reported the story, "about a dozen staffers debated whether to take action on Van Rootselaar's posts." Some had identified the suspect's usage of the AI tool as an indication of real world violence and encouraged leaders to alert authorities, the US outlet reported. But, it said, leaders of the company decided not to do so. In a statement, a spokesperson for OpenAI said: "In June 2025, we proactively identified an account associated with this individual [Jesse Van Rootselaar] via our abuse detection and enforcement efforts, which include automated tools and human investigations to identify misuses of our models in furtherance of violent activities." They said the company would continue to support the police's investigation. The BBC has contacted the Royal Canadian Mounted Police for comment. OpenAI has said it will uphold its policy of alerting authorities only in cases of imminent risk because alerting them too broadly could cause unintended harm. It has also said that it trains ChatGPT to discourage imminent real-world harm when it identifies a dangerous situation and to refuse to help people that are attempting to use the service for illegal activities. The company added that it is constantly reviewing its referral criteria with experts and that it is reviewing the case for improvements. The deadly attack on Tumbler Ridge Secondary School saw a further 27 people injured. Van Rootselaar was found dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound at the school. Police said the suspect was born a biological male but identified as a woman. Van Rootselaars's mother and step-brother were among the victims of the shooting. Both were found dead at a local residence, police said. The motive for the attack is not yet known.

OpenAI Flagged a Mass Shooter's Troubling Conversations With ChatGPT Before the Incident, Decided Not to Warn Police

Employees at OpenAI urged leaders to alert the police, but they opted not to. A grim scoop from the Wall Street Journal: an automated review system at OpenAI flagged disturbing conversations that a future mass shooter was having with the company's flagship AI ChatGPT -- but, despite being urged by employees at the company to warn law enforcement, OpenAI leadership opted not to. The 18-year-old Jesse Van Rootselaar ultimately killed eight people including herself and injured 25 more in British Columbia earlier this month, in a tragedy that shook Canada and the world. What we didn't know until today is that employees at OpenAI had already been aware of Van Rootselaar for months, and had debated alerting authorities because of the alarming nature of her conversations with ChatGPT. In the conversations with OpenAI's chatbot, according to sources at the company who spoke to the WSJ, Van Rootselaar "described scenarios involving gun violence." The sources say they recommended that the company warn authorities local authorities, but that leadership at the company decided against it. An OpenAI spokesperson didn't dispute those claims, telling the newspaper that it banned Van Rootselaar's account, but decided that her interactions with ChatGPT didn't meet its internal criteria for escalating a concern with a user to police. "Our thoughts are with everyone affected by the Tumbler Ridge tragedy," the company said in a statement to the paper. The spokesperson also said that the company had reached out to assist Canadian police after the shooting took place. We've known since last year that OpenAI is scanning users' conversations for signs that they're planning a violent crime, though it's not clear whether it's yet successfully headed off an incident before it happened. Its decision to engage in that monitoring in the first place reflects an increasingly long list of incidents in which ChatGPT users have fallen into severe mental health crises after becoming obsessed with the bot, sometimes resulting in involuntary commitment or jail -- as well as a growing number of suicides and murders, leading to numerous lawsuits. In a sense, questions of how to deal with threatening online conduct is a longstanding question that every social platform has grappled with. But AI brings difficult new questions to the topic, since chatbots can engage with users directly -- sometimes even encouraging bad bad behavior or otherwise behaving inappropriately. Like many mass shooters, Van Rootselaar left behind a complicated digital legacy -- including on Roblox -- that investigators are still wading through.

Canadian trans shooter's disturbing ChatGPT messages alarmed...

ChatGPT-maker OpenAI banned Canadian transgender school shooter Jesse Van Rootselaar's account over his violent behavior on the platform last year -- but never alerted authorities before he gunned down eight people in one of the country's deadliest mass killings. The 18-year-old high school dropout carried out the second-worst school shooting in Canadian history last week, first slaughtering his mother and stepbrother at home and then storming into Tumbler Ridge Secondary School, where he killed six people and injured 25 more before turning the gun on himself The San Francisco tech company said it spotted the deranged shooter's alarming profile in June through abuse-monitoring systems and considered referring the account to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. However, OpenAI concluded the disturbing activity didn't meet the bar for notifying law enforcement and banned the account for policy violations. Following the mass killing, the company reached out to law enforcement. "Our thoughts are with everyone affected by the Tumbler Ridge tragedy," an OpenAI spokesperson said. "We proactively reached out to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police with information on the individual and their use of ChatGPT, and we'll continue to support their investigation." Canadian authorities confirmed they were contacted by the AI firm after the shooting, adding an investigation into Rootselaar's social media and online activity is underway. Rooselaar launched his horrifying attack at a private residence in the sleepy rural community of Tumbler Ridge on Feb. 10 before continuing the carnage at the school. Six people were found dead inside the school, and the bodies of Van Rootselaar's mother, 39, and stepbrother, 11, were discovered in a local residence, cops said. The victims included one female teacher, three female students and two male students.