Family of surviving victim of Tumbler Ridge shooting brings lawsuit against OpenAI

For some reason I read this comment in the same tone that I read “and they were roommates!”

Claude is anthropic. Google owns Gemini 

For the record, Google owns and maintains Gemini. Claude is built and run by Anthropic. Other LLMs: ChatGPT is OpenAI Grok is XAI/xitter/spacex/musk Llama is Facebook Nemotron is Nvidia Deepseek, qwen, kimik2, and a few others are random Chinese startups and universities

People can sue over anything at all. Gemini referred that guy to seek help, gave him suicide hotlines, clarified multiple times that it was engaging in roleplay the user demanded. There should more guardrails but you ultimately have to recognize that people are ultimately responsible for their own decisions.

Wow that is fucked up

Where the shooting occurred (Canada) yes the f*** we do

As much as the US needs to better regulate firearms, this shooting occurred in Canada, not the US.

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Therapists are expensive and often completely out of reach to people, especially people in poverty or who have addictions and desperately need therapy but can't afford it. I don't think that chatbots should replace therapists. Like obviously if you can access a therapist, you should, but that's not an option for a lot of people and it's a resource that isn't always available. I've personally found chatbots to be quite useful for when I'm spiralling at 3am and my therapist is obviously and understandably unavailable. So for many people, a therapist isn't always an option and a chatbot is absolutely 100% better than nothing. Banning someone for talking about suicide is just taking away a resource from someone who really needs it, and it is far more likely to push them over the edge than to push them towards help. And before anyone comments about those shitty 24 hour free helplines - have you ever tried calling them yourself? If you did, you'd probably realise how useless they are and how cold and empty that advice feels for someone in a crisis. People often need several sessions over weeks before they are comfortable talking to someone about their trauma and can't comfortably do that over the phone with a stranger. In my experience, a chatbot is infinitely better than those shitty helplines.

Of the things you listed only one was repeatedly actively verbally encouraging its users to bring harm to themselves and others. Coincidentally, the same thing's creators have admitted to having only limited control over it's outputs, on account of it functionally being a black box at this point.

YouTube actively removes videos on how to commit crimes. Specifically because they don't want to get sued for having them up. Gun manufacturers don't get sued after mass shootings because there is a federal law saying you can't and if you do you have to pay their legal fees. And theres a difference between me going "hey I want to burn this down" and this humanoid thing telling me "dude you should totally go burn that thing down"

I think you have a point. But I'd say AI/ AI companies carry a larger share of the blame because the LLM's respond. I'm obviously putting out an extreme hypothetical out here as an example but the gist is what I'm trying to get at. For example like if you ask a car "Hey, should I run over that pedestrian for yelling at me?" It probably wouldn't respond and thus the onus would be on you. But if the LLM say's "Of course you're absolutely correct! Here is why: They shouldn't be yelling at you in the first place" It is an affirmation and support that objects and things normally wouldn't give. Hell, even a gun, a leading cause of death by action to others. This applies. A person whispering to a gun "Should I do it?" and the gun won't respond. But to the AI, it's "You're absolutely right. Here is why:..." Is a level of culpability that can be definitively seen. Now, should it be seen that way and what should be done? That's a different discussion entirely. But in this case, there's not a lot of room for nuance at least when it comes to why the AI/company should receive blame alongside the end user. Whereas material car and gun companies aren't affirming the idea that doing something heinous is okay. \*Edited to clarify that guns cause death to others instead of just generically causing death because that's clearly the very most important thing to clarify in an AI debate. Since AI can also affirm someone planning to do death by cancer and stroke on... themselves? I mean if they have a barrel of radioactive material that they wanted to scatter in a public area, to bring about public cancer, I suppose. Fair enough.

If there is a great deal of harm letting an unchecked population have free access to it, there should be restrictions on the technology. Gun makers don't get sued after mass shootings, but you don't see guns being offered with five free bullets with more locked behind an account. Meanwhile, everybody and their mums are looking to infuse AI into everything. AI art, AI music, AI accounting, AI healthcare, AI lawyers.... We've seen services like Grok be used to create [CSAM and non-consensual images of naked women by the millions](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/jan/22/grok-ai-generated-millions-sexualised-images-in-month-research-says), but the only restrictions put on it was a paywall. We know it's still being used by many users for the exact same stuff, but how many users will we say should we slap charges on before we consider turning off faucet? How can Canadians force US private company TO shut off the faucet when we won't even have these conversations? We've seen hundreds of AI images breaking copyrights of many an artist, company, copyright holder, and yet there's only been two lawsuits on a few companies for that, we know for a fact that[ Meta's AI training destroyed millions of books and stole millions more](https://www.vanityfair.com/news/story/meta-ai-lawsuit) but it's not like that's stopped other companies from mass collecting and destroying books. How can we tell private companies to stop burning books when we can't even know what they've stolen? We've also seen AI chatbots ruin lives and marriages, including the current Gemini case, but [Google was ALSO involved in the Character.AI lawsuits](https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/google-chatbot-start-settle-teen-163747263.html) that lead CHILDREN and teenagers to self-terminate. Five families lost their children in that article and they WERE sued for it, they just refused to comment or admit any liability. Which is what we've seen across the board EVERY time a company has a lawsuit, because that's the legally smart move. It's also not very helpful for the rest of us. How many times should we look at individual cases as its rampant use and adoption across the board continues before we say enough is enough? Because everyone seems to think that AI is the next best thing to add to their business, and the consequences are catching up fast. The question is if we'd actually have functional legislation by that point.

Charles Manson didn't kill anyone, himself. *edit grammar

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Okay, Rogan. I'm Just Asking Questions!

That was in June of last year, not a week prior.

Why sue the company and not the law enforcement than?

You didn't read it did you. If you had, you'd realize the linked article has absolutely no details to offer

Or "Special Military Operations"...

Mmm, spice.

Holy shit. Human beings knew about the planned shooting prior to, and decided NOT to forward the content? I admit I didn't watch the video, because video and not article. If so, I'm an idiot, and will edit my comment to say so. But I can't watch the video now.

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It amazes me that allowing other people the choice to die with dignity upsets some people. Don’t like MAID? *Cool…* Don’t use it and then mind your own business while living your own life.