OpenAI’s Sam Altman apologises over failure to report Canadian mass shooter

xwhatsapp-strokecopylinkgoogleAdd Al Jazeera on GoogleinfoSam Altman, cofounder and CEO of OpenAI, testifies before a Senate committee hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, in May 2025 [File: Jose Luis Magana/AP Photo]By John PowerPublished On 25 Apr 202625 Apr 2026OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has apologised over his company’s failure to warn authorities about the concerning online activities of a teen who went on to commit one of Canada’s worst mass shootings. Jesse Van Rootselaar, 18, went on a shooting spree in Tumbler Ridge, British Columbia, on February 10, killing eight people. The victims included Rootselaar’s mother and half-brother, and five students at the remote community’s secondary school. Rootselaar, who was born male but identified as female, died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. OpenAI said after the attacks that Rootselaar’s ChatGPT account had been flagged internally the previous June for misuse “in furtherance of violent activities”, resulting in its suspension. The San Francisco-based AI company said at the time that it had not informed authorities, as Rootselaar’s usage of the chatbot had not met the threshold of posing a credible or imminent threat of harm to others. In a letter shared on Friday by the Tumbler RidgeLines news site and British Columbia Premier David Eby, Altman acknowledged that OpenAI should have alerted law enforcement to Rootselaar’s suspension. “I am deeply sorry that we did not alert law enforcement to the account that was ban