An 18-year-old man who allegedly killed eight people in a mass shooting in Tumbler Ridge, Canada, reportedly used OpenAI’s ChatGPT in ways that worried the company’s staff.
Jesse Van Rootselaar’s talks describing gun violence were flagged by the company’s LLM monitoring tools for misuse and banned in June 2025.
Company staff debated whether or not to report the behavior to Canadian law enforcement, but ultimately did not, according to in the Wall Street Journal. An OpenAI spokesperson said Van Rootselaar’s activity did not meet the criteria for reporting to law enforcement. the company contacted Canadian authorities after the incident.
“Our thoughts are with everyone affected by the Tumbler Ridge tragedy,” an OpenAI spokesperson said in a statement. “We proactively contacted the Royal Canadian Mounted Police with information about the individual and their use of ChatGPT and will continue to support their investigation.”
The ChatGPT transcripts weren’t the only part of Van Rootselaar’s digital footprint. He apparently created a game on Roblox, the global simulation platform frequented by children, that simulated a mass shooting at a mall. He also posted about guns on Reddit.
Van Rootselaar’s instability was also known to local police, who had been called to her family’s home after she started a fire while under the influence of unspecified drugs.
LLM chatbots built by OpenAI and its competitors have been accused of causing mental damage to users who lose control of reality while conversing with digital models. Multiple lawsuits have have been filed and report transcripts of conversations encouraging people to kill themselves or offering help to do so.
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This post has been updated with feedback from OpenAI.
