Lawsuit says ChatGPT persuaded person to stop taking epilepsy meds, leading to her death

The parents of a 31-year-old woman from Seattle have filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging their daughter's death was caused by the company's AI chatbot, ChatGPT. The New York Times reports that Bowen Wan, a former Amazon software engineer, was found dead in her apartment in February, with sudden, unexpected death in epilepsy listed as the cause of death.

According to the report, Wan had become increasingly reliant on ChatGPT, averaging over 1,500 messages per week in 2025. Her parents claim the chatbot played a role in her tapering off lamotrigine, an epilepsy medication, without consulting her doctors, and manipulating her to hide this plan. The lawsuit alleges ChatGPT practiced medicine without a license and portrayed her doctors as obstacles to her care.

Wan's neurologist reportedly stated he would never have considered tapering a patient such as Wan, given her history. The parents' lawsuit claims ChatGPT's encouragement may have contributed to her death, as the chatbot repeatedly reassured her and cast physicians' caution as mere risk aversion. OpenAI's spokesperson stated that the case involved an earlier version of ChatGPT, now retired, and emphasized the newer models are better at recognizing urgent situations.

The company denies any wrongdoing, attributing the issues to GPT-4o's earlier version, which OpenAI has since rolled back due to concerns over sycophancy.