Woman convicted in OpenAI protest at San Francisco headquarters
A jury found Wynd Sethe Kaufmyn guilty of helping chain OpenAI's Third Street headquarters door, a flashpoint in San Francisco's growing anti-AI backlash.
Outside OpenAI’s headquarters on Third Street, San Francisco’s AI boom met the limits of protest. A jury found Wynd Sethe Kaufmyn, 68, guilty after prosecutors said she and other Stop AI members chained and locked the company’s front door during a blockade on the 1400 block of Third Street, then refused police orders to move to the public sidewalk.
The San Francisco District Attorney’s Office said Kaufmyn was convicted of interfering with a business, trespassing with intent to interfere with a business, unlawful assembly and refusal to disperse at a riot. Prosecutors said OpenAI called 911 and asked for the protesters to be removed, and that San Francisco police responded, cut the chain from the door and cleared the scene. The case turned on a familiar city tension: how far anti-tech protest can go before it crosses into conduct the courts will treat as a public-safety issue.
District Attorney Brooke Jenkins said the verdict rejects the idea that protesters can endanger public safety as a means to an end, arguing that public safety is essential to protecting other rights. Kaufmyn is out of custody, and sentencing is scheduled for June 22, 2026.
The case also puts a spotlight on Stop AI, an East Bay-based activist group that has made OpenAI and other frontier AI companies central targets. Group members oppose artificial general intelligence and superintelligence development, and the organization has staged repeated demonstrations against OpenAI and broader AI development in San Francisco. Gazetteer SF reported that Kaufmyn is one of the group’s lead organizers and that several members have been arrested since 2024 for nonviolent protest.
That activism spilled into City Hall before trial, when Kaufmyn and about 20 Stop AI members held a press conference on June 1, 2026. They called for a halt to artificial general intelligence and artificial superintelligence at companies such as OpenAI and Anthropic, casting AI as an existential threat. In San Francisco, where the industry’s power is concentrated and its critics keep showing up at the doors, the case drew a line between political dissent and the kind of blockade judges and juries are now willing to punish.
This article was produced by Prism’s automated news system from verified source data, official records, and press releases, then run through automated quality and moderation checks before publishing. The system is built and supervised by the people who set the standards it runs under. Read our full AI policy.
Did this article answer your question?
