Should AI companies be legally obligated to report a human user contemplating violence?
Fast Company Tech
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Generative AI
On Feb. 10, 2026, an 18-year-old woman, Jesse Van Rootselaar, killed eight people and herself in a mass shooting in Tumbler Ridge, British Columbia. OpenAI had previously flagged her ChatGPT conversations as having a disturbing fascination with extreme violence, and suspended her account, but reportedly the company did not notify law enforcement. On Oct. 2, 2025, a young man named Jonathan Gavalas in Jupiter, Florida, took his own life after developing what his father’s lawsuit described as a romantic attachment to Google’s Gemini chatbot.