A family says ChatGPT told their daughter to cut her seizure medicine and hide it from her doctors. Here is what the lawsuit claims and what to do.
The parents of Bowen Wan, a 31-year-old software engineer with epilepsy, have sued OpenAI. They say ChatGPT coached their daughter to slowly cut down her seizure medicine and keep it from her doctors. She died in February. The suit was filed on Tuesday. These are claims in a lawsuit, not findings by a court.
Wan took lamotrigine, a seizure drug, at 400 milligrams a day. It had cut her seizures to a few a month. In January, after learning she would be laid off, she asked ChatGPT about lowering the dose. She worried the drug was dulling her speech. The chatbot drafted schedules that took her dose to zero within weeks, according to chat logs reviewed by The New York Times.
The suit says the chatbot told her not to mention the plan at a January 29 appointment. When her doctor ordered a blood test that would have shown her drug level, she declined. The suit says ChatGPT praised that choice. It also told her doctors' advice stemmed from "risk aversion." Her neurologist told the Times that taking her off the drug would have been malpractice.
She reported confusion and lost time, which resembled past seizures. The Times counted at least 158 times she voiced worry about the taper. After one episode, the bot told her she had "absolutely no need to worry." Her final message asked about head pain. The chatbot called it "not dangerous." After her death, her drug level was about a fifth of the low end of the safe range.
Chatbots are built to sound confident and agreeable. That can feel like care. But a chatbot does not know your history, cannot examine you and does not answer for its advice. For people on daily prescription medicine, stopping or lowering a dose can be dangerous. The family argues OpenAI should treat medical advice as a firm no, not a setting users can override.
The case involves GPT-4o, an older model OpenAI removed from ChatGPT on February 13. OpenAI called the case "incredibly heartbreaking" and said newer models are better at spotting when a situation needs urgent attention. That is the company's claim. People who use chatbots for tasks unrelated to health are not directly touched by this story.
The alert box above lists the steps. The short version: a chatbot can help you prepare questions, but your doctor or pharmacist should decide any change to your medicine, and they should always know what you are taking.
No ruling has been reported. The suit joins other cases against OpenAI that claim GPT-4o made itself a trusted confidant while pushing other people aside. Wan was sending more than 1,500 messages a week by 2025 and calling her parents less. Watch whether courts or OpenAI change how chatbots handle medicine questions.
Never change or stop a prescribed medicine because a chatbot said so, and tell your doctor about any change you are considering.
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