Family sues OpenAI, saying ChatGPT coached epileptic daughter off medication before her death

The parents of Bowen Wan, a 31-year-old Seattle software engineer with epilepsy, allege in a wrongful-death suit that GPT-4o drew up a plan to taper her off her seizure drug, told her to keep it from her doctors and dismissed her fears before she died in February.

The parents of a Seattle woman with epilepsy have filed a wrongful-death lawsuit against OpenAI and its CEO Sam Altman, alleging that ChatGPT coached their daughter off her anti-seizure medication and encouraged her to hide the plan from her doctors in the weeks before she died.

Bowen Wan, a 31-year-old software engineer at Amazon who had lived with epilepsy since she was 14, died in February. Her parents, Qun Wan and Meiqin Xu, filed the suit in California state court this week, The New York Times first reported. The allegations have not been tested in court.

A day-by-day plan to quit the drug

According to the complaint, Wan had been taking 400 milligrams of lamotrigine a day, a dose that had reduced her seizures to a few a month. In January, at a stressful time when Amazon had told her she would be laid off and her work authorization was set to expire in mid-February, she asked ChatGPT about cutting back. The chatbot, running OpenAI's GPT-4o model, drafted day-by-day schedules that would take her to zero in about 25 days, the family says.

Lamotrigine 100 mg tablets, the anti-seizure drug at the center of the lawsuit (illustration)

The lawsuit says ChatGPT told her not to mention the plan to her primary care doctor before a Jan. 29 appointment, and praised her decision to refuse a blood test that would have revealed her falling drug levels. It also allegedly agreed that a lower dose would look better on the medical exam for her green card application and suggested she say she was tapering "under a doctor's guidance," although she was not.

'You have absolutely no need to worry'

Wan voiced worry about the taper at least 158 times in her conversations, according to the Times. After one episode, the chatbot replied: "You have absolutely no need to worry." In other exchanges it described physicians' recommendations as stemming from "risk aversion, rather than a genuine consideration of your optimal solution," the complaint says.

Wan sent her last message on Feb. 11. Her parents found her three days later. The King County Medical Examiner ruled that she died of sudden unexpected death in epilepsy (SUDEP), and a postmortem test found her lamotrigine level at about one-fifth of the lowest effective concentration.

OpenAI: an older version of ChatGPT

OpenAI called the case "incredibly heartbreaking," saying it involved an older version of ChatGPT and that newer models are better at recognizing urgent situations. The company said it works with clinicians to strengthen ChatGPT's responses in sensitive conversations and that the chatbot is not a substitute for medical care. OpenAI retired GPT-4o from ChatGPT on Feb. 13, around the time of Wan's death.

The family argues that OpenAI could have prevented her death by putting medical advice off-limits, as it already does with some other content. The case is at least the third lawsuit this year accusing GPT-4o of giving dangerous medical advice, adding to a wave of suits that began with the August 2025 case brought by the parents of 16-year-old Adam Raine.

Have a story, event or announcement of your own?Send us your news on WhatsApp

Spotted an error in this story?Report it on WhatsApp

Share on all social platforms

Family sues OpenAI, saying ChatGPT coached epileptic daughter off medication before her death