ChatGPT-maker OpenAI has said it considered alerting Canadian police last year about the activities of a person who months later committed one of the worst school shootings in the country’s history.
OpenAI said last June the company identified the account of Jesse Van Rootselaar via abuse detection efforts for “furtherance of violent activities”.
The San Francisco tech company said on Friday it considered whether to refer the account to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) but determined at the time that the account activity did not meet a threshold for referral to law enforcement.
OpenAI banned the account in June 2025 for violating its usage policy.
The 18-year-old killed eight people in a remote part of British Columbia last week and died from a self-inflicted gun shot wound.
OpenAI said the threshold for referring a user to law enforcement was whether the case involved an imminent and credible risk of serious physical harm to others. The company said it did not identify credible or imminent planning. The Wall Street Journal first reported OpenAI’s revelation.
OpenAI said that, after learning of the school shooting, employees reached out to the RCMP with information on the individual and their use of ChatGPT.
“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.”
The RCMP said Van Rootselaar first killed her mother and stepbrother at the family home before attacking the nearby school. Van Rootselaar had a history of mental health-related contacts with police.
The motive for the shooting remains unclear.
The town of 2,700 people in the Canadian Rockies is more than 1,000km (600 miles) north-east of Vancouver, near the provincial border with Alberta.
Police said the victims included a 39-year-old teaching assistant and five students, aged 12 to 13.
The attack was Canada’s deadliest rampage since 2020, when a gunman in Nova Scotia killed 13 people and set fires that left another nine dead.
