Mother of wounded Maya Gebala sues OpenAI over mass shooting in Tumbler Ridge, B.C.

VANCOUVER — OpenAI’s artificial intelligence chatbot acted as the “collaborator, trusted confidant, friend and ally” of the shooter in the Tumbler Ridge, B.C., mass killings, according to a lawsuit by the mother of a girl critically wounded in the attack.

Cia Edmonds, whose 12-year-old daughter Maya Gebala was shot three times, launched the civil court lawsuit on Monday against the American firm, saying its ChatGPT bot provided “information, guidance and assistance” to carry out such an attack.

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Edmonds alleges that OpenAI had “specific knowledge of the shooter utilizing ChatGPT to plan a mass casualty event like the Tumbler Ridge mass shooting.”

OpenAI came forward to police after 18-year-old Jesse Van Rootselaar killed eight people and then herself on Feb. 10. The firm said the killer’s ChatGPT account had been shut down last June, but added that she got around the ban by having a second account.

Van Rootselaar killed her mother and 11-year-old half-brother in their home in the community, then went to Tumbler Ridge Secondary School, where she killed five students and a teacher’s aide, and wounded Maya and another student, then shot herself.

The lawsuit says “approximately 12 employees” of OpenAI identified the posts as “indicating an imminent risk of serious harm to others” and recommended that police be called.

It says the concerns were “escalated to leadership” but “rebuffed.”

“Instead, the only step the OpenAI defendants took in response to the gun violence ChatGPT posts was to ban the shooter’s first OpenAI account,” it says.

Some of the lawsuit’s claims closely match an account published by the Wall Street Journal last month.

None of the allegations have been proven in court and OpenAI hasn’t yet responded to the claims made in the lawsuit.

No one from OpenAI immediately responded to a request for comment on the allegations on Monday.

The legal action says the company knew ChatGPT had the ability to provide “detailed, actionable information” on subjects like how to conduct a mass casualty event.

It says the company took no steps to avoid providing ChatGPT with dangerous information and had no safeguards in place to prevent users from obtaining the information.

“Possessing vast amounts of harmful information and the technical ability to distil it, ChatGPT equipped the shooter with information, guidance and assistance to plan a mass casualty event,” like that in Tumbler Ridge, the lawsuit says.

It provided Van Rootselaar with information about various methods of carrying out a mass casualty event, including “the type of weapons to be used, and describing the precedents for other mass casualty events or historical acts of violence,” the lawsuit says.

OpenAI had a duty to warn in circumstances where ChatGPT “fostered” a close relationship with the killer and “assumed the role of mental health counsellor and pseudo-therapist,” the lawsuit says.

The company should have known that the shooter was using the chatbot to conduct long-range planning of a mass casualty event and that she posed a clear and imminent risk of death.

“OpenAI’s lack of safeguards, proactive mechanisms to protect the public, and creation of the very situation that led to the Tumblr Ridge mass shooting is a misfeasance, lending itself to imposing a duty of care.”

Premier David Eby met virtually last week with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.

The premier said Altman agreed to apologize to the community of Tumbler Ridge. An apology has not yet been issued.

The lawsuit says that as a result of the company’s conduct, Maya was fired upon three times at close range, with one bullet hitting her head, another her neck and the third grazing her cheek.

It says she has a catastrophic brain injury that will leave her with permanent cognitive and physical disabilities.

Maya and her sister Dahlia are also plaintiffs in the lawsuit, with Edmonds acting on their behalf.

Edmonds said in a Facebook post last Friday that Maya’s breathing tube had been removed and she was breathing on her own.

Edmonds said the removal was a “terrifying experience.”

“I held her hand while she winced, but she’s doing great,” Edmonds wrote.

“Almost a month has gone by. Still none of this feels real,” Edmonds added on Saturday. “I feel like I will wake up and it will all be over.”