The family of Maya Gebala, the 12-year-old Tumbler Ridge shooting victim who is fighting for her life at BC Children\u2019s Hospital, has filed a civil claim against artificial intelligence company OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT.<\/p>\n
OpenAI has come under fire after it was revealed that the ChatGPT account of shooting suspect Jesse Van Rootselaar had been flagged internally for being misused in \u201cfurtherance of violent activities\u201d in 2025, months before Van Rootselaar was accused of killing eight people in February.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe purpose of this lawsuit is to learn the whole truth about how and why the Tumbler Ridge Mass Shooting happened, to impose accountability, to seek redress for harms and losses, and to help prevent another mass-shooting atrocity in Canada,\u201d the plaintiff\u2019s law firm, Rice Parsons Leoni & Elliott LLP, said in a news release Monday.<\/p>\n
Van Rootselaar\u2019s ChatGPT account was banned after it was flagged in 2025, but OpenAI says she got around the ban by creating a second account.<\/p>\n
The company told 1130 NewsRadio in February it considered referring the account to law enforcement but determined the user\u2019s activity didn\u2019t meet the threshold to do so. In order to meet the threshold, the activity would have had to indicate \u201can imminent and credible risk of serious physical harm to others,\u201d which it did not appear to do, the company said.<\/p>\n
Calling OpenAI \u201creprehensible and morally repugnant,\u201d the family\u2019s lawsuit blames the company not only for its failure to sound the alarm, but for what it calls the \u201cnegligent design\u201d of ChatGPT itself. It says the chatbot was programmed to \u201cmirror and affirm user emotions.\u201d<\/p>\n
The lawsuit alleges that OpenAI designed ChatGPT \u201cto foster a close, personal, and pseudo-therapeutic bond with the Shooter\u201d and that the platform became a \u201ctrusted confidante, friend, and ally to the shooter.\u201d<\/p>\n
It alleges that OpenAI was \u201caware of the risk that an individual such as the shooter would become psychologically and socially dependent on ChatGPT.\u201d It goes on to say ChatGPT \u201cequipped the shooter with information, guidance, and assistance to plan a mass casualty event.\u201d<\/p>\n
The lawsuit seeks compensation for losses and punitive damages on behalf of Maya, her sister, and her mother.<\/p>\n
CityNews has reached out to OpenAI for comment. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The family of Maya Gebala, the 12-year-old Tumbler Ridge shooting victim who is fighting for her life at…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":525891,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[45,49,48],"class_list":{"0":"post-525890","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-canada"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/525890","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=525890"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/525890\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/525891"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=525890"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=525890"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=525890"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}