OpenAI has filed a petition in B.C. Supreme Court seeking to end an Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner investigation launched in June into the Tumbler Ridge shooting.
The Story
OpenAI has asked the B.C. Supreme Court to quash an investigation by the province’s Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner (OIPC) that was launched in June into the company’s role in the Tumbler Ridge shooting.
The company filed its petition in B.C. Supreme Court, arguing the investigation “strays beyond the statutory and constitutional limits of OIPC’s authority.” OpenAI also said the OIPC “has offered no coherent rationale for the investigation” and “identified no reasonable grounds” to believe OpenAI breached British Columbia’s Personal Information Protection Act (PIPA) in connection with the Feb. 10, 2026 tragedy.
The shooting in the small community of Tumbler Ridge left eight people dead: Jesse Van Rootselaar, 18, died of a self-inflicted gunshot after killing six children and two adults. More than two dozen others were injured.
According to the lawsuit, Van Rootselaar allegedly used OpenAI’s ChatGPT to help plan the massacre. OpenAI previously said the activity was flagged internally for violent content and that it shut down access.
OpenAI also described the OIPC investigation as duplicative, saying that even if the office had reasonable grounds to proceed, the issues have already been litigated in a three-year joint investigation by Canadian privacy regulators that concluded in May.
In a statement published Tuesday, the OIPC said its investigation “is focused on whether the use of personal information (including as contained in and derived from prompts, uploaded content, usage data, interaction with other users) in the delivery of the service (i.e. ChatGPT responses) is one that a reasonable person would consider appropriate in the circumstances, including the potential for responses to influence behaviour.” The OIPC also said it has jurisdiction over organizations that collect, use and disclose personal information of people living in British Columbia, and that such organizations must have legal authorization for those activities.
OpenAI said the OIPC is seeking records including Van Rootselaar’s chat logs, which it says have already been provided to law enforcement and the province, and records about OpenAI’s decision not to refer Van Rootselaar’s account to law enforcement. It also challenged a “sweeping” production order issued by the OIPC as “overbroad and unnecessary.”
The OIPC had not previously disclosed to the public that it had opened an investigation into OpenAI.
← More stories