ChatGPT Was Reportedly Used in Planning School Stabbing in Pirkkala, Finland, That Injured Three Pupils

May 20, 2025

In May 2025, a 16-year-old boy injured three 14-year-old girls at Vähäjärvi School in Pirkkala, Finland. Initial reports suggested the suspect used ChatGPT during the attack's planning process, according to a manifesto attributed to him. Subsequent court proceedings revealed hundreds of pre-attack searches or queries on AI topics, such as stabbing techniques, anatomy, school attacks, police procedures, evidence concealment, and manifesto creation. This incident underscores the need for responsible AI governance and safe and secure AI practices to prevent such harmful uses.

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Matched TAIM controls

Suggested mapping from embedding similarity (not a formal assessment). Browse all TAIM controls

Alleged deployer
pirkkala-school-stabbing-suspect, openai
Alleged developer
openai, ai-search-technology-developers
Alleged harmed parties
vahajarvi-school-pupils, vahajarvi-school-community, pirkkala-school-stabbing-victims, students, high-school-students, educational-communities

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Source

Data from the AI Incident Database (AIID). Cite this incident: https://incidentdatabase.ai/cite/1489

Data source

Incident data is from the AI Incident Database (AIID).

When citing the database as a whole, please use:

McGregor, S. (2021) Preventing Repeated Real World AI Failures by Cataloging Incidents: The AI Incident Database. In Proceedings of the Thirty-Third Annual Conference on Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence (IAAI-21). Virtual Conference.

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