OpenAI is being sued 30 more times over a mass shooting, and the plaintiffs argue ChatGPT itself shares the blame.
The lawsuits, filed Wednesday in a California federal court, come from students, teachers, and the principal at the Tumbler Ridge school where the shooting happened. They accuse OpenAI and CEO Sam Altman of providing "substantial assistance and encouragement" to suspect Jesse Van Rootselaar. The claim centers on OpenAI's own automated review system, which the suits say flagged conversations Van Rootselaar had with ChatGPT about gun violence. OpenAI allegedly did not act on those flags. The filings follow an earlier round of lawsuits brought by victims' families back in April.
This is no longer a one-off complaint. It is the second wave of suits built on the same theory: that an AI company can be held liable not just for what a chatbot said, but for what it noticed and did nothing about. That framing echoes recent product liability suits against other chatbot makers over teen self-harm cases, part of a broader legal push to treat conversational AI less like a neutral tool and more like a product with a duty to intervene.
A flag in a safety system is not the same as a phone call to police, and courts will have to decide how much of that gap belongs to OpenAI.