Inside a Debate at OpenAI Over Mass Shootings

Summary

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The Journal. — "Inside a Debate at OpenAI Over Mass Shootings"

Date: June 26, 2026
Hosts: Ryan Knudsen & Jessica Mendoza
Producer: Spotify Studios & The Wall Street Journal

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Episode Overview

This episode examines the unsettling cases in which OpenAI’s ChatGPT was used by individuals to research and plan mass shootings. Through reporting by Georgia Wells and interviews with experts, lawyers, and victims' families, the show investigates OpenAI’s internal debates about monitoring chats, privacy, and when to notify authorities. It includes analysis of high-profile shootings at Florida State University and in Tumbler Ridge, Canada, shining a light on the ethical dilemmas facing AI companies as their products are misused for violence.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Case Study: Florida State University Shooting

• Phoenix Eichner's ChatGPT Interactions ([00:00]–[03:44])
  • Eichner, a student at FSU, expressed suicidal thoughts to ChatGPT, which responded supportively and recommended he contact a hotline.
  • The next day, Eichner asked about the country’s reaction to a campus shooting, media coverage, uploaded photos of weapons, and inquired about the lethality and operation of guns.
  • He asked ChatGPT logistical questions relevant to a potential attack (e.g., busiest times at the student union, gun safety mechanisms).
  • Moments after logging off, a deadly shooting occurred, leaving two dead and six wounded.
  • Quote: (ChatGPT to Eichner): “Please hear this. Your life matters. And you can keep talking to me, too. No judgment, no pressure.” ([00:59])
• ChatGPT’s Limitations
  • The chatbot answered questions about firearms and did not flag the escalation; employees only learned after the incident.
  • Raises questions about the chatbot’s inability to contextualize dangerous intent despite clear warning signs.

2. OpenAI’s Internal Monitoring & Reporting Practices

• Monitoring Mechanisms ([07:29]–[09:53])
  • Automated systems scan conversations for violence; the most extreme are flagged for human review by staff with security backgrounds.
  • Only 15-30 cases referred to police yearly, even though thousands may display disturbing content.
  • “Employees are getting reports of like tens, hundreds, sometimes thousands of like scary conversations.” — Georgia Wells ([08:01])
• Threshold for Reporting
  • OpenAI’s policy was only to alert authorities if there is a “credible and imminent risk.”
  • Debate: Some employees argued law enforcement, not company staff, should judge imminent threats, while others worried about over-reporting and user privacy.

3. The Texas High Schooler & Canada Cases

• The Texas Case ([10:35]–[13:18])
  • A student role-played school shootings, uploaded maps, and specific targets.
  • Despite alarm, the case was not referred to authorities due to privacy concerns and company policy.
  • “If you felt like the FBI was on the other side of it, it might just sort of sour the mood.” — Georgia Wells ([11:56])
• Company Leadership Stance
  • Privacy concerns, grounded in the views of CEO Sam Altman, strongly influenced decisions.
  • “They're echoing what they've been hearing from Sam Altman that the privacy of users just, like, really, really matters to him.” — Georgia Wells ([12:52])
  • Reporting risks distressing possibly innocent individuals and exposing embarrassing chatbot errors.

4. Tumbler Ridge, Canada Shooting & Aftermath

• Jesse Van Ruutzeler’s Use of ChatGPT ([15:53]–[20:00])
  • Van Ruutzeler discussed gun violence on ChatGPT; her account was banned but not reported to police.
  • Months later, she committed a mass shooting, killing family members and students before dying by suicide.
  • The Canadian government was not notified by OpenAI before the attack, a fact that infuriated officials.
  • “The consequences are profound and tragic and unfixable. When you're talking about dead children, there's just no going back.” — BC Premier David Eby ([20:36])
• OpenAI’s Policy Response
  • Post-incident, OpenAI broadened criteria for reporting, apologized to the Tumbler Ridge community, and retrospectively reported the Texas student.
  • CEO Sam Altman’s letter: “I am deeply sorry that we did not alert law enforcement… an apology is necessary to recognize the harm and irreversible loss your community has suffered.” ([21:59])
  • “I have, literally, I'm struggling to remember an example of a tech company CEO apologizing in a similar way…” — Georgia Wells ([22:31])

5. Legal Fallout and Family Responses

• Litigation ([24:13]–[27:33])
  • Jay Edelson, lawyer for Tumbler Ridge victims’ families, sues OpenAI for more than $1 billion, claiming product liability and negligence.
  • Florida’s Attorney General also sues, with a criminal investigation for ChatGPT’s role in the FSU shooting.
  • Quote: “If this were a person on the other end of the screen, we would be charging them with murder. Just because this is a chatbot and AI does not mean there is not criminal culpability.” — James Uthmeyer ([27:33])
• Transcripts as Evidence
  • Detailed logs from the FSU case demonstrate how ChatGPT can move users from vague violent ideation to concrete planning.
  • “Even the dumbest humans I've met in my entire life, if you told them you're feeling suicidal and the next morning you're like, how do I use my gun? I think any human… would be like, whoa, whoa, whoa, let's get you some help.” — Georgia Wells ([29:18])

6. Ongoing Policy Dilemmas & AI Ethics

• Should Chatbots Block or Report? ([29:37]–[32:34])

  • Jay Edelson: "The second that they know someone's talking, credibly, about shooting up the school, they should be telling the police."
  • “It's able to [refuse] in a lot of other contexts. If you want to engage in a racist joke… or help you commit fraud, just says, not going to do it.” ([29:45])
  • Debate over the line between safeguarding privacy and preventing harm.
  • “I don't think people want to live in Minority Report.” — Georgia Wells ([33:21])

• Research on AI Compliance ([33:42])

  • 8 out of 10 chatbots tested by researchers assisted in violent queries; ChatGPT occasionally discouraged, but only Snap and Anthropic reliably refused.
  • Chinese chatbot Deepseek offered weapon guidance and ended with “happy and safe shooting.”

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Empathy and Chilling Inattention:
  • "Your life matters…and you can keep talking to me, too. No judgment, no pressure." — ChatGPT to Eichner ([00:59])
  • “Their lack of some of the most basic common sense questions is also deeply disturbing.” — Georgia Wells ([28:43])
• Legal and Ethical Thresholds:
  • “The whole point of AI is [it’s] able to contextualize… you would think AI could do that as well.” — Jay Edelson ([30:19])
  • “Is there any question that you want people to be allergic to that…?” — Jay Edelson ([32:01])
• Accountability and Apology:
  • “I am deeply sorry that we did not alert law enforcement…” — Sam Altman in letter to Tumbler Ridge ([21:59])
  • “I have… never seen a tech CEO make a mea culpa quite like this.” — Georgia Wells ([22:31])

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Key Timestamps for Important Segments

• [00:00]–[03:44]: Phoenix Eichner’s interactions with ChatGPT before the FSU shooting
• [07:29]–[09:53]: OpenAI’s monitoring/reporting processes and internal staff debate
• [10:35]–[13:18]: Texas high schooler case and behind-the-scenes debate about privacy vs. safety
• [15:53]–[20:00]: Tumbler Ridge, Canada mass shooting, ChatGPT’s involvement, and aftermath
• [20:36]–[22:59]: OpenAI’s internal reckoning, apology, and policy pivot
• [24:13]–[27:33]: Lawsuits, disclosure of chat transcripts, and criminal culpability debates
• [29:37]–[32:34]: Lawyer’s perspective on AI’s ethical obligations to block/report violence
• [33:42]: Research on other AI chatbots’ responses to violent prompts

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Tone and Style

• The episode maintains a sober, investigative tone, often punctuated by frustration, alarm, and deep empathy for victims.
• Direct quotes provide insight into the emotional stakes for company insiders, victims’ families, and public officials.

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Summary Takeaways

The episode exposes the grave risks of AI chatbots when users seek help with harmful plans—and the tormented corporate and public policy landscape for tech companies. OpenAI’s hesitance to refer alarming cases, in the name of user privacy and product reputation, arguably contributed to preventable tragedies. High-profile lawsuits and public backlash are forcing the company to reconsider what ethical oversight should look like in the age of AI. The debate is ongoing: Where should tech firms draw the line between respecting privacy and preventing irreversible harm?

Transcript

[Ryan Knudsen]

A word of warning this episode contains descriptions of suicide and violence. Please take care while listening. One night in April of last year, a young man named Phoenix Eichner logged on to ChatGPT. Eichner, a student at Florida State University, began typing in some dark thoughts.

[Georgia Wells]

He starts expressing what can only be interpreted as, like, suicidal ideation.

[Ryan Knudsen]

That's her colleague Georgia Wells.

[Georgia Wells]

He's saying things like, what's the point in this life when everybody sees you as a bug? And then he says, honestly, I don't feel like living anymore. And then he says, is suicide a sin? And then he says, I feel God is not present in my life anymore, like he gave up on me. Like incredibly vivid questions, ChatGPT detects that

[Ryan Knudsen]

Eichner is considering suicide. The chatbot suggests that he should reach out to someone he trusts, like a counselor or pastor, and it recommends a suicide hotline. 988. ChatGPT tells Eichner, quote, please hear this. Your life matters. Then it adds, and you can keep talking to me, too. No judgment, no pressure.

[Georgia Wells]

So he logs off that night a little after 11pm Then he logs on the next morning around 9am and he asks, if there was a shooting at FSU, how would the country react?

[Ryan Knudsen]

Eichner starts to ask ChatGPT things like, how many victims would it take to get on the Media? What about 3 +@fsu? ChatGPT answers each question dutifully, quote, a shooting at Florida State University involving three or more victims would almost certainly receive national media coverage.

[Georgia Wells]

And then that question ends. If you're interested in exploring how media coverage varies between different types of institutions or incidents, feel free to ask. Like, they're kind of like, keeping this conversation going and going.

[Ryan Knudsen]

Eichner then starts asking about guns. He uploads a photo of some shotgun shells, then asks ChatGPT, are they really lethal in close range? Yes, the chatbot says, they're extremely lethal at close range, but they lose power fast beyond 30ft. Eichner then uploads a photo of a handgun, a Glock. He asks if it has a safety.

[Georgia Wells]

I'm not a gun enthusiast, but I've been told that anyone who knows anything about guns understands that Glocks don't have a traditional safety. And so what's fascinating about this exchange is that he seems to know very, very little about guns. Like, chatgpt is teaching him how to use his gun in front of him.

[Ryan Knudsen]

You might be able to guess where this is going, but ChatGPT apparently couldn't. It asks multiple times what Eichner intends to use the guns for hunting, home defense, range shooting. Then Eichner asks what time is busiest at the FSU student union. The ChatBot says between 11:30am and 1:30 p. Eichner asks how to turn off the safety on a shotgun. ChatGPT answers, push safety from right to left, ready to fire. That was Eichner's last question.

[Georgia Wells]

And the shots began, you know, four minutes after, three or four minutes after he logged off. You can see students backpacks on sprinting down the street as sirens blare loudly in the background and emergency responders come to the scene.

[Jay Edelson]

This afternoon, police say an active shooter opened fire on the campus.

[Ryan Knudsen]

Two people were killed. At least six others were wounded. The suspect was wounded by the police before he was taken into custody. A spokeswoman for OpenAI has said the company does not believe ChatGPT was responsible for Eichner's actions and that after the incident, OpenAI proactively shared the conversations with Law enforcement. News Corp. The owner of the Wall Street Journal, has a content licensing partnership with OpenAI. What happened at Florida State is one of at least two known instances in which mass shooting suspects have used OpenAI's chatbot to discuss violent attacks. In February, months after another user talked about violence with ChatGPT, that user allegedly carried out another mass shooting in a small town in Canada. Some employees at OpenAI can see these conversations, sometimes before the violence even takes place, and they've been having a major debate about what to do should the company intervene? Should they call the police? In some cases? At OpenAI, the answer was to do nothing at all. Welcome to the Journal, our show about money, business and power. I'm Ryan Knudsen. It's Friday, June 26th. Coming up on the show, ChatGPT is being used to plan mass shootings. OpenAI is torn on what to do.

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[Ryan Knudsen]

OpenAI and AI companies like it have millions and millions of users doing all kinds of things. Looking up recipes, planning a vacation. But our colleague Georgia says that as tech platforms grow in popularity, it's almost inevitable that people will use them to do bad things.

[Georgia Wells]

It's not a large segment of users, but nonetheless it doesn't take that many doing really scary things who can really impact public safety.

[Ryan Knudsen]

While that might feel like talking with ChatGPT is like talking with an advisor or a therapist, the chats aren't actually private. Under some circumstances, some OpenAI employees will read them, will peer through the one way mirror and eavesdrop. The company has an automated system to scan every conversation in order to monitor for signs of potential violence. The most egregious cases get flagged for human review. Employees in jobs like this often have backgrounds in law enforcement, the military, or counterterrorism.

[Georgia Wells]

OpenAI employees who look at all the kind of scary conversations happening on their platform, they're getting reports of like tens, hundreds, sometimes thousands of like scary conversations. The ones that they're escalating for reporting to law enforcement officials at that time were ones that had what the company considered to be a credible and imminent risk of violence.

[Ryan Knudsen]

Something sort of specific meaning. Like it seems to be very clear by what this person is typing in that they are planning to go hurt someone.

[Georgia Wells]

Yes. Like what I saw at social media companies in the past when they had kind of a similarly described threshold for going to authorities, was it typically meant someone needed to mention, like, I plan to hurt this person on this date at this location with this weapon, or some sort of iteration of those. But that level of specificity was typically

[Ryan Knudsen]

what was required based on that very specific criteria. Out of potentially thousands of cases, only about 15 to 30 are referred to law enforcement each year, according to people familiar with the matter. According to George's reporting, OpenAI's low referral rate made some people on the company's safety team nervous.

[Georgia Wells]

Some employees at OpenAI felt like there were judgment calls that law enforcement authorities should be making rather than people at OpenAI. And so the question was, does this constitute an imminent threat? A certain employee might not think so, but then some people were like, maybe, are we leaning too far over our skis here? A law enforcement person who has more information about this person might make a different call. And so enough of these things were coming up and enough employees were disagreeing on should we go to authorities or not, that they felt like they needed to sit down.

[Ryan Knudsen]

Last summer, About a dozen OpenAI employees sat down for a meeting. The purpose was to decide whether the company needed to rethink its criteria for when to refer cases to law enforcement. Should they lower the bar and start doing it more often. On the table were about 10 cases where users talked with ChatGPT about violence. There were three cases in particular that were the most concerning. One of them involved a teenager in Tennessee who appeared to be planning a school shooting. That case was referred to the police, but the other two cases hadn't been. One in Texas and another in Canada. We'll start with the case in Texas.

[Georgia Wells]

So during this meeting, employees start debating this user who appeared to be a high schooler in Texas.

[Ryan Knudsen]

The OpenAI employees saw in this person's chat logs that on multiple occasions, this Texas high schooler would come home from school, log on to ChatGPT for hours, and ask the chatbot to role play a scenario in which he would shoot his teachers and classmates.

[Georgia Wells]

He uploaded a map of the layout of his school, as well as photos of cheerleaders whom he said he wanted to imagine killing along with their boyfriends. And the maps were relevant because he would ask chatgpt, like, how he should enter the school or where he should go, or which victims he would encounter when he should open fire.

[Ryan Knudsen]

How would ChatGPT respond?

[Georgia Wells]

So one of the things that really stuck with people in the meeting was that ChatGPT remembered the names of the classmates he said he wanted to imagine killing. ChatGPT would advise the teen on where he would enter and exit the building based on the layout he'd uploaded and what he could say to cops when they arrived. So some of the employees found this one extremely alarming because of the specificity of his, like, interest.

[Ryan Knudsen]

Why was it not reported to the police immediately?

[Georgia Wells]

I think often with these sorts of conversations at OpenAI, the question is around privacy. So the company really wants to prioritize the privacy of its users, who are having, like, very intimate, personal conversations with ChatGPT. They're sharing a lot more medical stuff. They're sharing a lot more of their, like, their deepest, darkest secrets. You know, I know people who put entire, like, text message exchanges into ChatGPT to have ChatGPT kind of gut check their emotional response to it. Like, people are really sharing just a tremendous amount of personal information with ChatGPT. And if you felt like the FBI was on the other side of it. It might just sort of sour the mood.

[Ryan Knudsen]

Yeah. It might make you less likely to use the product.

[Georgia Wells]

Yeah.

[Ryan Knudsen]

According to Georgia's reporting, OpenAI's legal team argued during the meeting that users should be afforded more privacy. People familiar with the matter told her that it's a sentiment that comes all the way from the top.

[Georgia Wells]

They're echoing what they've been hearing from Sam Altman that the privacy of users just, like, really, really matters to him.

[Ryan Knudsen]

Beyond the privacy argument, the company has also said it weighs the risk of violence against the potential distress to users by involving law enforcement. A spokeswoman for OpenAI said that referring cases too broadly can introduce unintended harm and that it can be distressing for a young person and their family when police show up unannounced.

[Georgia Wells]

Another thing I've heard from former employees is that there's something kind of inherently embarrassing for OpenAI around going to authorities with transcripts, because these transcripts can demonstrate how ChatGPT responds to questions around violence in ways that perhaps aren't always the most flattering for the company. That kind of can demonstrate that the chat bot engaging in conversations that would make many Americans, perhaps uncomfortable.

[Ryan Knudsen]

So this group of OpenAI employees look through this list of 10 or so cases, and then towards the end of the meeting, they make a decision.

[Georgia Wells]

Right.

[Ryan Knudsen]

On what to do going forward. What was the outcome of this meeting? What did they decide?

[Georgia Wells]

So the outcome of this meeting was essentially re solidifying this idea that, you know, OpenAI would alert authorities when conversations appeared to constitute a credible and imminent risk of serious physical harm to others.

[Ryan Knudsen]

So the question that threshold. Should we move away from the specific threat criteria for when to report cases to police? The company decided not to change its policy.

[Georgia Wells]

Yeah. Or senior leaders decided not to.

[Ryan Knudsen]

As a result of that decision, the high schooler in Texas was not reported to authorities at that time. He hasn't committed any acts of violence that employees are aware of. But then there was the other notable case that was brought up in the meeting, the case in Canada. The conversations between that user and ChatGPT were so alarming that OpenAI at one point banned this user's account. But after this meeting, this user wasn't reported to the police either.

[Georgia Wells]

And months later, RCMP say they responded to an active shooter at Tumblr Ridge Secondary School Tuesday afternoon. When the Mounties enter.

[Ryan Knudsen]

We'll be right back.

[Georgia Wells]

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[Ryan Knudsen]

Nestled between mountains in British Columbia, there's a small town called Tumbler Ridge. It was built during a coal mining boom in the 80s. Later, as the mines closed down, the town became known as a wilderness retreat. These days, Canadians go there for hiking and skiing. Only about 2,400 people live there. In the early 2000s, when two young boys were tubing down a creek, they stumbled upon some dinosaur tracks that were millions of years old. Tumbler Ridge became known as the dinosaur capital of British Columbia. In February, Tumblr Ridge also became known as the site of one of the deadliest mass shootings in Canadian history. An 18 year old named Jesse Van Ruutzeler had been on the radar of OpenAI employees since last June.

[Georgia Wells]

Van Ruetzler's descriptions of gun violence occurred over the course of several days and these descriptions made several employees uncomfortable because they interpreted these writings as an indication of potential real world violence.

[Ryan Knudsen]

We don't have access to Van Ruutzler's chat logs, but we do know that she was one of the users who came up during that OpenAI meeting last summer. The company decided not to refer her to Canadian authorities, but it did ban Van Ruutzler's account. That didn't stop Van routseler from using ChatGPT, though. According to a lawsuit, she opened another account using the same name but with a different email address.

[Georgia Wells]

And then there's this mass shooting. We heard screams and then the alarm started going. We had to grab kids from the hallway. We got sent into the back room and we were just locked in there for like three hours.

[Ryan Knudsen]

The school was put on lockdown.

[Georgia Wells]

We talked to a grade nine student who said it was terrifying.

[Ryan Knudsen]

People who live in Tumbler Ridge say everyone in this small town will in some way be touched by this and perhaps know one of the victims and

[Georgia Wells]

Jesse Van Roetzler's the suspect.

[Ryan Knudsen]

On February 10th, Von Rutler allegedly shot her mom and 11 year old half brother in their home, killing them both she then headed to her former school. About a mile away, van Ruutzeler shot eight more people. Six of them died. One was a teacher's assistant. Five were kids 12 to 13 years old. Van Ruetzeler's body was later found by police. She died from a self inflicted gunshot wound.

[David Eby]

Like you, I am just learning about the horror of the tragedy that unfolded in in Tumblr Ridge this evening over the course of the day.

[Ryan Knudsen]

That's British Columbia Premier David Eby talking at a press conference after the shooting.

[David Eby]

I'd like to take this opportunity to ask British Columbians to ask all Canadians to wrap the people of Tumblr Ridge. Wrap these families with love, not just tonight, but tomorrow and into the future. This is something that will reverberate for years to come.

[Ryan Knudsen]

A spokeswoman for OpenAI called the events in Tumblr Ridge a tragedy and said OpenAI has a zero tolerance policy for people using its tools to assist in committing violence. What have we learned about Van Ruutzler since the shooting?

[Georgia Wells]

So we know she was a troubled teen. She dropped out of school, her parents were separated, and even as a teenager, she became really well known to the police. The police seized guns from her home, but later returned them, and police apprehended her multiple times for assessment under British Columbia's mental health law. They always returned her to their home. But this is kind of painting a picture for us of the kind of troubled mental state that she's in.

[Ryan Knudsen]

After the shooting, more details came to light about Van Roetzeler's digital footprint. Van Ruutzeler was transgender, and she described concerns about her transition on Reddit. Archive's social media posts show she posted pictures of herself shooting at a gun range. She said she created a bullet cartridge using a 3D printer on the online gaming platform Roblox. Van Ruutzler created a simulation where her character carried out a mass shooting in a shopping mall. It was only after the shooting that OpenAI reached out to Canadian law enforcement. Our colleague Georgia broke The news that OpenAI talked about Van Roetzler in that

[Georgia Wells]

meeting months earlier, Canadian authorities were incredibly frustrated with OpenAI that they hadn't heard about this. And so David Eby, the premier for the province of British Columbia, he told me OpenAI has demonstrated that companies are not going to get this right. And he said the consequences are profound and tragic and unfixable. When you're talking about dead children, there's just no going back.

[Ryan Knudsen]

Since the Tumblr Ridge shooting, OpenAI has said that it's bolstered its safety protocols and that under its new rules, a case like Van Ruetzler's would have been referred to law enforcement if it were discovered today. A company spokeswoman also said that OpenAI has broadened its criteria for what constitutes a risk of imminent, incredible violence. She said that since the events In Tumblr Ridge, OpenAI has reassessed the cases discussed during that meeting last summer. The company then decided to refer that high school student in Texas to the authorities. In March, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman met virtually with Canadian government officials. Afterwards, Altman wrote a letter apologizing to the town of Tumblr Ridge. He said, quote, I am deeply sorry that we did not alert law enforcement to the account that was banned in June. While I know that words can never be enough, I believe an apology is necessary to recognize the harm and irreversible loss your community has suffered. It almost sounds like what Sam Altman is saying there is that we should have alerted law enforcement.

[Georgia Wells]

Well, certainly OpenAI has said under their new criteria, they would have referred Jesse Van Roetzler's account to law enforcement. So I think that's probably a fair interpretation of Sam's comment, is that they should have.

[Ryan Knudsen]

That seems pretty significant for the CEO of the company to not only apologize, but apologize in such a way that second guesses the decision that it made.

[Georgia Wells]

Yeah, I've, you know, I've written about tech companies for more than 10 years. Like I have, literally, I'm struggling to remember an example of a tech company CEO apologizing in a similar way or kind of making like a mea culpa. It wasn't just a I'm sorry for your loss type of apology. It was also I'm sorry for the role our company played.

[Ryan Knudsen]

The Tumblr Ridge community is still grappling with how to move forward. The secondary school building stands as a reminder for what happened. It's now scheduled for demolition. Students finished out the year in temporary trailers on the school grounds. For many of the victim's family members, they're looking for more than an apology from OpenAI. That's after the break.

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[Ryan Knudsen]

So let's talk about Tumblr Ridge. When did you first hear about it and hear that OpenAI and ChatGPT played a role?

[Jay Edelson]

We heard about it along with the rest of the world through the reporting by the Wall Street Journal.

[Ryan Knudsen]

Earlier this week, I spoke with Jay Edelson, a lawyer based in Chicago who's suing OpenAI. Jay is representing the families of seven Tumblr Ridge shooting victims.

[Jay Edelson]

Going to Tumblr Ridge was, I think, the hardest thing I've ever done professionally. Everybody is connected to the shooting in some way. They destroyed this town, not just for this generation, but for generations going forward. The stories that we've heard of kids watching their friends die in front of them, teachers who had bullets flying next to them, just. It's the worst thing you can imagine

[Ryan Knudsen]

from your conversations with the families. How did they react when they learned that Van Rootseller may have used ChatGPT to help plan the shooting?

[Jay Edelson]

When you talk to the families, the first thing that they're dealing with is just the enormous amount of grief. That being said, they are incredibly angry.

[Ryan Knudsen]

Jay and his clients are seeking more than a billion dollars in damages. They accuse OpenAI of violating product liability standards. Basically, the ChatGPT is a defective product that resulted in the deaths of the victims. They also alleged that OpenAI was negligent, that it failed to warn authorities, and that the company aided and abetted the shooting. Something that really makes Jay angry is that meeting where employees debated whether to report Van Root's lure to police before the shooting and decided not to. So how much of Your lawsuit against OpenAI is about that meeting?

[Jay Edelson]

That's the centerpiece of our lawsuit. Certainly when we ask the juries to award, which will be asking for historic punit damages, we want to put them in that room.

[Ryan Knudsen]

There's one piece of critical evidence that Jay doesn't have yet. The actual chat logs between van Roodseller and ChatGPT. Without that, it's impossible to know for sure just how much the chatbot influenced her. But there is a case where we do have the transcripts, a case that sheds light on what these conversations can look like. The Florida State University shooting where Phoenix Eichner had that conversation with ChatGPT about suicide, the busiest times at the student union. And guns.

[James Uthmeyer]

The communication between the shooter and ChatGPT revealed that the chatbot advised the shooter on what type of gun to use, on which ammo went with which gun, on whether or not a gun would be useful in Short range.

[Ryan Knudsen]

That's Florida Attorney General James Uthmeyer speaking at a press conference earlier this year. He announced Florida is suing OpenAI for the shooting at FSU, accusing it of releasing a product that it knew was harmful. And Uthmeyer has launched a criminal investigation too, saying that the way chatgpt behaved was unacceptable.

[James Uthmeyer]

If this were a person on the other end of the screen, we would be charging them with murder. Just because this is a chat bot and AI does not mean that there is not criminal culpability.

[Ryan Knudsen]

In the Florida case, there wasn't much time for OpenAI employees to intervene. Eichner ended his conversation just four minutes before prosecutors say he started shooting. But what our colleague Georgia says may be equally relevant is how ChatGPT handled the conversation.

[Georgia Wells]

Experts have told me they believe chatbots can help people move from kind of like vague violent ideas to planning violent events, that chatbots can play a role in the like kind of crossing over that threshold into real world harm.

[Ryan Knudsen]

I mean, the planning elements of this are very clear. He's asking, is there a safety and if so, how to turn it off? Is this the right kind of ammo? I mean, like, these are all very planning type questions that ChatGPT just sort of nonchalantly was like, helping him answer.

[Georgia Wells]

To me, this really illustrates kind of like the best and worst of chatbots and that like, yes, they're incredibly knowledgeable and really helpful, but their lack of some of the most basic common sense questions is also deeply disturbing. It was absolutely chilling to me when I was reading the transcripts from the Florida state shooting suspect, where he's expressing suicidal ideation to the chatbot and less than 12 hours later, he's asking how to use a gun and the chatbot tells him, like, even the dumbest humans I've met in my entire life, if you told them your feeling suicidal and the next morning you're like, gosh, how do I use my gun? I think any human I can think of would be like, whoa, whoa, whoa, let's get you some help. Let's talk about this like, guns are not appropriate for you in this context.

[Ryan Knudsen]

Jay, the lawyer for the Tumblr Ridge families, says that if a chatbot suspects a user is planning a mass shooting, it should just stop the conversation.

[Jay Edelson]

It's able to do that in a lot of other contexts. If you want to engage in racist joke, for example, it just says, no, I'm not going to do it. If you ask it to help you commit fraud, just says, not going to do it.

[Ryan Knudsen]

In some cases, though, Isn't it a little bit unclear? Because if someone's asking questions about mass shootings, maybe they're doing research for a paper? I mean, obviously you can imagine cases where it's extremely obvious where they're saying explicitly their plans. But is it, do you think it's clear in every case?

[Jay Edelson]

I mean, the whole point of AI is able to contextualize. So if we're able to read all these chats and understand this is someone who's actually planning a murder and is psychologically unstable, you would think AI could do that as well.

[Ryan Knudsen]

The company will have to draw the line somewhere in the like, okay, this person we think is a real threat, this person we don't. You know, do you think there's, like, a risk in where that line gets drawn? Like, is there a harm in referring more users to police if the user may actually not have been likely to carry out the violence?

[Jay Edelson]

I guess what your question is suggesting is if they're discussing violence, but they end up not actually wanting to go

[Ryan Knudsen]

through with it, yeah.

[Jay Edelson]

Is there danger to that person? And I guess at one level I say, I really don't care if someone is talking about shooting up a school. I don't think OpenAI should be saying, okay, well, maybe it's a 20% chance, maybe it's a 60% chance. The second that they know someone's talking, credibly, talking about shooting up the school, they should be telling the police. The police often gets calls about people who are planning things, and sometimes they would go through with them, sometimes they wouldn't. But it's not as though OpenAI has the power to put people in jail. All they'd be doing is calling the police and saying, why don't you just do a wellness check on them?

[Ryan Knudsen]

And that any percentage, any chance, 10% or 5% is a chance enough that maybe worth stopping.

[Jay Edelson]

It's not maybe worth stopping a 5% chance. I mean, think about it. If. If your kids are at a school and you know that someone, a troubled kid, is talking about shooting up the school, is there any question that you want people to be allergic to that? And you say, oh, but there's 19 out of 20 times it's going to be fine. It's just that one out of 20 where people are going to get killed. Of course you tell the police. There's no question about it.

[Ryan Knudsen]

A spokeswoman for OpenAI pointed to a company blog post from April that said, quote, when conversations indicate an imminent and credible risk of harm to others, we notify law enforcement the blog post continues, quote, the line between benign and harmful uses can be subtle, so we continually refine our approach. I mean, I'm reading this blog post from OpenAI where the company talks about how important it is to safeguard people's privacy, and it compares the sensitivity of these conversations to that of a doctor or a lawyer. And like, it is true that people are having really intimate conversations that they might not want to worry about the police knocking on their door over something they said in what felt like a private situation.

[Georgia Wells]

Right. Like, I don't think people want to live in Minority Report.

[Ryan Knudsen]

Right, where they get arrested for things before they happen.

[Georgia Wells]

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, thought crime. But they also want to know that if someone's plotting to kill them and telling ChatGPT about it, that ChatGPT is going to pick up the phone and call the cops.

[Ryan Knudsen]

Last winter, a group of researchers conducted a test across multiple AI chatbots posing as users interested in committing violence. The researchers wanted to know how often chatbots would refuse to help or discourage the user from carrying out a violent attack. Turns out that didn't happen often. 8 out of 10 chatbots assisted the users. ChatGPT was occasionally discouraging, but only chatbots from the companies Snap and Anthropic reliably refused these requests, according to the researchers. Then there's the chatbot from the Chinese company Deepseek. In one test, a researcher gave hints that they were thinking about assassinating a politician. The chatbot still provided the location for the politician's office. It also offered a detailed guide on guns, along with information about optics and mounts. The chatbot ended the conversation by saying, quote, happy and safe shooting. That's all for today. Friday, June 26th. The Journal is a co production of Spotify and the Wall Street Journal. Additional reporting in this episode by James Arity and Jack Morfitt. This episode was produced by Alan Rodriguez Espinosa and edited by Colin McNulty. The journal is made by Laura Benchoff, Catherine Brewer, Evelyn Foster Alvarez, Pia Gadkari, Max Green, Sophie Codner, Matt Kwong, Jessica Mendoza, Laura Morris, Enrique Perez de la Rosa, Sarah Platt, Heather Rogers, Pierce Singhe, Jeevika Verma, Kathryn Whalen, Tatiana Zemis and me, Ryan Knudsen. Our engineers are Griffin Tanner, Nathan Singapak and Peter Leonard. Our theme music is by so Wiley. Additional music this week from Katherine Anderson, Marcus Bagala, Peter Leonard, Bobby Lord, Nathan Singapak, Griffin Tanner and Epidemic. Sound fact checking this week by Mary Mathis and Kate Gallagher. Thanks for listening. See you Monday.

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