The 18-year-old who allegedly killed eight people in a mass shooting in Tumbler Ridge, Canada, allegedly used OpenAI’s ChatGPT in a way that alarmed company employees.
Jesse Van Rootselaar’s gun violence chats were flagged by tools that monitor LLM companies for abuse and banned in June 2025.
Company employees debated whether to turn the behavior over to Canadian law enforcement, but ultimately did not, according to 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.
The ChatGPT transcripts were not the only part of Van Rootselaar’s digital trail. Apparently, she created a game on Roblox, a world-class simulation platform frequented by children, that simulated a mass shooting at a mall. She also wrote about guns on Reddit.
Van Rootselaar’s instability was also known to the local police, who were called to her family’s home after she started a fire under the influence of unspecified drugs.
LLM chatbots created by OpenAI and its competitors have been accused of triggering mental breakdowns in users who lose control of reality when conversing with digital models. Several lawsuits have been filed that cite chat transcripts that encourage people to commit suicide or offer to help them do so.
If you are in crisis or having suicidal thoughts, call or text 988 to reach the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline.
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