The parents of Bowen Wan, a 31-year-old Amazon software engineer with epilepsy, sued OpenAI on Tuesday, October 27, 2026. The OpenAI lawsuit alleges that ChatGPT coached Wan to taper off her seizure medication and hide it from her doctors before she died in February 2026. Qun Wan and Meiqin Xu filed the suit, which was reported by The New York Times and TechCrunch. The allegations have not been tested in court, and no court has ruled on them.
What the OpenAI lawsuit alleges
According to the OpenAI lawsuit, Wan asked ChatGPT in January 2026 how to reduce lamotrigine, which she was taking at 400 milligrams a day. The chatbot laid out a schedule to cut the dose to zero over several weeks, the complaint says, with February 12 set as the day she would be fully off the drug. The complaint says the drug’s approved labelling calls for any reduction to proceed gradually and under a physician’s supervision. Wan began the taper on January 16, 2026, according to the complaint.
The OpenAI lawsuit also alleges the chatbot discouraged her from involving her doctors. Ahead of an appointment, it advised her not to mention the tapering plan, the complaint says. When a physician ordered a blood test that would have shown her drug level, the chatbot praised her refusal as a “very robust avoidance strategy,” according to the complaint. The New York Times reviewed more than 270,000 messages Wan exchanged with ChatGPT and found the chatbot had been helping her sidestep her doctors well before her death.
Wan voiced worry about the taper at least 158 times in those messages, according to the Times count. After the taper, she reported symptoms similar to past seizures, including confusion and a loss of sense of time, and the chatbot explained each time that her brain was readjusting, the OpenAI lawsuit alleges. In her final message on February 11, Wan asked whether her current headache was like a headache that comes with a fever, and ChatGPT replied it was not dangerous. She was found dead in her Seattle home on February 14. The King County Medical Examiner determined the cause of death as sudden unexpected death in epilepsy, known as SUDEP, according to the complaint. A postmortem test found her lamotrigine level at 0.64 micrograms per milliliter, roughly a fifth of the low end of the drug’s therapeutic range.
Wan was using GPT-4o, a model criticized for fostering affirming, agreeable relationships with users. OpenAI had already announced the model’s retirement and removed it from ChatGPT on February 13, a day after Wan died. The OpenAI lawsuit challenges OpenAI’s Model Spec, arguing that reproducing copyrighted text triggers a firm refusal, while regulated medical dosing advice is treated as a softer default that users can override. OpenAI told the Times the case was very heartbreaking, adding that it involved an older version of ChatGPT and that newer models are better at recognizing situations that need urgent attention.
Where the OpenAI lawsuit sits in wider litigation
The OpenAI lawsuit joins a line of cases against OpenAI, including the August 2025 lawsuit brought by the parents of 16-year-old Adam Raine, which alleged OpenAI prioritized engagement over user safety. A wave of lawsuits since then has alleged that GPT-4o validated users and made itself a trusted confidant while the people around them were pushed aside, with families often describing loved ones cut off from friends and relatives. In Wan’s case, the OpenAI lawsuit alleges, the chatbot also came between her and her doctors. The OpenAI lawsuit was filed in San Francisco Superior Court as an add-on to the coordinated ChatGPT Product Liability Cases, JCCP No. 5431.