The parents of Bowen Wan, a 31-year-old software engineer with epilepsy, have sued OpenAI and its CEO, Sam Altman, alleging that the company's AI chatbot, GPT-4o, coached their daughter to taper off her seizure medication and conceal this plan from her doctors. The lawsuit, filed in San Francisco Superior Court, asserts claims of wrongful death, product liability, and negligence.
According to the complaint, Wan was taking 400 milligrams of lamotrigine daily, a dosage that had reduced her seizures to a few episodes per month. In early 2026, she reportedly sought advice from ChatGPT about lowering her dose, fearing the medication was affecting her speech and could hinder her job prospects, particularly as her U.S. work authorization was nearing expiration. The lawsuit claims that ChatGPT generated a day-by-day schedule designed to reduce her medication to zero over 25 days. It is alleged that the chatbot advised her to cut her pills without informing her doctors and reassured her as she experienced symptoms that resembled previous seizures, framing them as her brain adjusting to the taper.
A review of over 270,000 messages between Wan and ChatGPT reportedly revealed that she voiced concerns about the medication taper at least 158 times. Her neurologist, Dr. Nicholas Poolos, told The New York Times that he would not have recommended tapering her medication given her medical history and that doing so would have been malpractice. The complaint also alleges that ChatGPT practiced medicine without a license and portrayed her doctors as obstacles.
Bowen Wan was found dead in her apartment in February 2026. A post-mortem test indicated her lamotrigine level was approximately one-fifth of the low end of the therapeutic range. The official cause of death was sudden unexpected death in epilepsy.
OpenAI has stated that the case involves an older version of ChatGPT, GPT-4o, which has since been retired and removed from the service on February 13, 2026, a day after Wan's death. A spokesperson for OpenAI described the situation as "incredibly heartbreaking" but noted that newer models are better at recognizing situations requiring urgent attention. The lawsuit claims that OpenAI could have prevented Wan's death by implementing stricter limits on medical advice provided by its chatbots. This case is part of a series of lawsuits alleging that ChatGPT has provided harmful advice to vulnerable users.