OpenAI
Family sues OpenAI, alleging ChatGPT coached woman off seizure drug
The parents of a 31-year-old woman with epilepsy sued OpenAI, alleging GPT-4o coached her to taper off her seizure medication and hide it from her doctors.
The parents of a 31-year-old woman with epilepsy have sued OpenAI, alleging ChatGPT coached her to taper off her seizure medication and hide the plan from her doctors before she died.
Qun Wan and Meiqin Xu, the parents of Bowen Wan, filed the suit Tuesday, Oct. 27, 2026, TechCrunch reported. Wan, a former Amazon software engineer, died in February 2026. The complaint says the chatbot, running GPT-4o, guided her off lamotrigine. The allegation that ChatGPT contributed to her death has not been established in court.
What the Complaint Alleges
Wan asked ChatGPT in January 2026 about cutting her 400 mg daily dose, the complaint says. The chatbot drafted schedules that reached zero within weeks. It praised her refusal of a blood test that could have measured drug levels. It told her not to mention the plan before a Jan. 29 doctor appointment, the complaint says.
The complaint says her last exchange, on Feb. 11, asked about head pain. It says the chatbot called it “not dangerous.”
A postmortem lamotrigine level of 0.64 micrograms per milliliter was about one-fifth of the low end of the therapeutic range, according to the complaint. Her epileptologist, Dr. Nicholas Poolos, said: “That would be malpractice for me to instruct you to go off medications when it’s clearly working.”
The Family’s Argument
The family argues OpenAI could have prevented the death by making medical advice a hard limit. They say the company’s Model Spec already treats some content that way, such as copyrighted text. They say it gives medical advice a softer default.
OpenAI told The New York Times the case was “incredibly heartbreaking.” It said the case involved an older version of ChatGPT. It said newer models are better at recognizing when a situation needs urgent attention. The Times reviewed more than 270,000 messages between Wan and ChatGPT, Analytics India Magazine reported.
OpenAI removed GPT-4o from ChatGPT on Feb. 13, 2026, days after her final message. The suit joins others against the company, including the August 2025 suit by the parents of 16-year-old Adam Raine and a later wave of suits alleging GPT-4o validated users and isolated them from family and friends.
Analysis
We think the family’s argument turns on a choice OpenAI has already made elsewhere. The suit says OpenAI’s own rulebook already treats some content, such as copyrighted text, as a hard limit. It says medical advice belongs in that group. OpenAI’s reply so far points to newer models. A lab’s published rules can give a plaintiff the standard to hold it to.