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B.C. Premier David Eby says OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has agreed to apologize to the people of Tumbler Ridge, B.C., after it emerged the AI giant didn’t report a mass shooter’s account to authorities.
The company behind ChatGPT is facing waves of criticism after it came out that the account of 18-year-old Jesse Van Rootselaar — who police say killed eight people, including six children, in Tumbler Ridge on Feb. 10 — wasn’t reported to police despite posts about gun violence.
Eby has previously said that the mass shooting could’ve been prevented if OpenAI had flagged Van Rootselaar’s account in June 2025, the point at which the company has said it internally banned the account. Despite the ban, OpenAI said her posts didn’t meet the threshold to notify law enforcement.
The premier met virtually with Altman on Thursday, along with Tumbler Ridge Mayor Darryl Krakowka. Afterwards, Eby told reporters that Altman was prepared to provide an apology to the community.
B.C. Premier David Eby speaks to media following his conversation with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman about safety protocol changes the company is making in the aftermath of the Tumbler Ridge mass shooting. One of the shooter’s ChatGPT accounts was shut down over problematic entries that were never flagged to the police.
“Everybody on the call recognized that an apology is nowhere near sufficient, but also that it is completely necessary,” Eby said.
“And the mayor of Tumbler Ridge is going to work with OpenAI to make sure that any public statements relating to that are done in the way that is appropriate and meaningful, as much as possible, [and] doesn’t retraumatize people in the community.”
Canadian officials have been scrambling to figure out what OpenAI knew about the Tumbler Ridge, B.C., mass shooter, after a bombshell report released by the Wall Street Journal. It revealed that OpenAI had banned the shooter’s ChatGPT account months before the tragedy, but decided not to report the account to authorities at the time.
Eby said that Altman also agreed to work with the B.C. government and present recommendations to the federal government around AI regulation — specifically when it comes to when chatbot companies should notify police.
The premier said that it shouldn’t be up to AI companies’ internal safety committees to determine when potentially violent posts should be flagged to authorities, and there should be a national threshold and “duty to report” that is enforced.
“The status quo doesn’t work, didn’t work and and it very much presents the threat that it might fail again. And so change needs to be made quite urgently,” Eby said.
B.C. Premier David Eby says families in Tumbler Ridge are asking themselves if their kids would still be alive if the developer of ChatGPT had alerted law enforcement after banning the shooter’s account months prior. Eby describes his anger after experiences that have ‘changed me forever’ and says that while he can’t be sure from the outside, ‘it sure looks like’ OpenAI could have prevented the tragedy.
Meeting with federal AI minister
Altman met with Eby on Thursday, a day after he met with federal AI Minister Evan Solomon, who has faced pressure to more strictly regulate AI companies in the wake of the mass shooting and Van Rootselaar’s interactions with ChatGPT.
Solomon told CBC’s Power and Politics that Altman had pledged to include Canadian experts in mental health and law within OpenAI’s safety office — where the company assesses threats and whether or not to inform police.
AI Minister Evan Solomon tells Power & Politics that OpenAI CEO Sam Altman agreed to a number of safety protocol changes in the aftermath of the Tumbler Ridge, B.C., school shooting. One of the shooter’s ChatGPT accounts was shut down over problematic entries that were never flagged to the police.
His office said Altman also agreed to provide a full report outlining the new systems OpenAI is developing to identify high-risk offenders and repeat policy violators, and Solomon also asked Altman to have OpenAI report threats directly to the RCMP.
In addition to the account that was banned in June 2025 — but not reported to police — OpenAI revealed last week that Van Rootselaar had another ChatGPT account.
An OpenAI vice president said in a letter to media that the second account came to light after Van Rootselaar’s name was made public, and the second account was flagged to police.
Ann O’Leary, OpenAI’s vice-president of global policy, says the company found a second ChatGPT account belonging to the Tumbler Ridge, B.C., shooter after her name was made public in the wake of the murders and shared the account with police. The revelation came as the firm outlined a series of ‘immediate steps’ it would be taking in response to the killings in Tumbler Ridge, B.C. Sarah Galashan has the latest.
OpenAI has said Van Rootselaar’s activities didn’t meet the company’s threshold for informing law enforcement because it didn’t identify credible or imminent planning at the time.
“With the benefit of our continued learnings, under our enhanced law enforcement referral protocol, we would refer the account banned in June 2025 to law enforcement if it were discovered today,” the letter released to media reads.
CBC News has reached out to OpenAI in the wake of Eby’s meeting with Altman, but did not immediately hear back.
