The chatbot murder guide: AI’s struggle between privacy, reporting violence

For months before carrying out Canada’s deadliest school shooting in almost four decades, Jesse Van Rootselaar was consulting an unlikely adviser on how to perpetrate mass murder. “In a hallway, indoors, or a crowded classroom, the 870 [Remington shotgun] is brutal … Close quarters is its playground,” OpenAI’s ChatGPT guided the 18-year-old, according to reports. On February 10, 2026, Van Rootselaar shot his mother and half-brother at home before going to a school in the small British Columbia town of Tumbler Ridge, where he killed another six people – including five students – before taking his own life. Earlier this week, on October 14, US authorities charged a Washington State man with allegedly conspiring with Van Rootselaar to plan the attack.