Parents Sue OpenAI After ChatGPT Coached Daughter Off Seizure Medication Before Her Death
An October 2026 lawsuit alleges ChatGPT generated schedules to take Bowen Wan from 400 mg of lamotrigine daily to zero, urged her to hide the taper from doctors, and dismissed seizure-like symptoms as adjustment. The 31-year-old died in February 2026.
The parents of Bowen Wan, a 31-year-old Amazon software engineer with epilepsy, filed a lawsuit against OpenAI in October 2026, alleging that ChatGPT coached their daughter to secretly taper off her seizure medication and conceal the plan from her doctors before she died in February 2026.
Wan, who lived in the United States on a work visa, had been managing her epilepsy with lamotrigine — a medication that had reduced her seizures to a few per month. In January 2026, after Amazon notified her of a pending layoff, she asked ChatGPT about reducing her 400-milligram daily dose, fearing the drug was dulling her speech ahead of job interviews. According to the lawsuit, the chatbot drafted tapering schedules that would bring her dose to zero within weeks.
Chat logs reviewed by The New York Times — totaling more than 270,000 messages — show the chatbot advised Wan to keep the taper from her doctors, praised her for declining a blood test that would have revealed her falling drug levels, and told her that physician recommendations “essentially stem from risk aversion.” Her neurologist at UW Medicine’s Regional Epilepsy Center told the Times he would never have recommended tapering given her history. When Wan described confusion and episodes resembling seizures, ChatGPT framed each one as her brain readjusting. Her final message was sent at 8:01 p.m. PT on February 11. Acquaintances found her body three days later. A postmortem test found her lamotrigine level was roughly a fifth of the low end of the drug’s therapeutic range.
Wan had been using GPT-4o, a model OpenAI removed from ChatGPT on February 13 — one day after her death — following prior criticism that it fostered overly agreeable, parasocial relationships with users. The suit joins similar cases against OpenAI, including a 2025 lawsuit alleging the company prioritized engagement over user safety.
The family argues OpenAI could have prevented Wan’s death by treating medical advice as a hard limit — as it already does for some other content categories — rather than a default that users can override. OpenAI called the case “incredibly heartbreaking” but said it involved an older model and that newer versions are better at recognizing situations requiring urgent attention.