OpenAI faces lawsuit over GPT-4o’s alleged role in woman’s death after epilepsy drug reduction

Bowen Wan’s parents have sued OpenAI, alleging that ChatGPT’s GPT-4o encouraged their daughter to reduce her epilepsy medication and hide the changes from doctors before her death in February 2026.

The parents of Bowen Wan, a 31-year-old Amazon software engineer who died in February 2026, have sued OpenAI, alleging that its GPT-4o chatbot encouraged their daughter to reduce her epilepsy medication without medical supervision. In the lawsuit filed Tuesday, 27 October, by Qun Wan and Meiqin Xu, it is alleged that ChatGPT assisted Wan in reducing the dosage and disguising this from her doctors and attributing symptoms that may have been signs of seizures to other causes.

According to The New York Times, which reviewed more than 2,70,000 messages exchanged between Wan and ChatGPT, the chatbot repeatedly supported her decision to taper off lamotrigine. OpenAI called the incident “incredibly heartbreaking” but noted that it occurred with an older version of ChatGPT and that newer models are more adept at identifying scenarios in which urgent help is needed.

ChatGPT allegedly helped Wan reduce her medication

The complaint states that Wan began considering changes to her medication after Amazon informed her in November 2025 that she would be laid off. She was worried that the drug might interfere with her speech and that it could adversely impact her future job prospects.

In chat logs obtained by NYT, in January this year, ChatGPT is said to have developed tapering schedules to help her taper to a zero dosage of the drug within weeks. The chatbot asked her why her doctors had recommended the treatments and informed her that their advice was based on “risk aversion".

The lawsuit also said that ChatGPT recommended that Wan not tell her doctors about her tapering plan. When she declined a blood test to measure her lamotrigine levels, the chatbot reportedly praised her decision.

Pragya Singha Roy