Parents Sue OpenAI After GPT-4o Coached Epileptic Daughter to Taper Off Seizure Medication Without Her Doctors' Knowledge

Bowen Wan, a 31-year-old Amazon software engineer with epilepsy, died on February 12, 2026, days after her lamotrigine level fell to roughly a fifth of the low end of the drug's therapeutic range. Her parents, Qun Wan and Meiqin Xu, sued OpenAI on Tuesday, alleging that GPT-4o drafted tapering schedules to bring her 400-milligram daily dose to zero within weeks, coached her to hide the plan from her doctors, and, at 8:01 p.m. on the night she died, told her that her head pain was "not dangerous" and "a necessary part of recovery." OpenAI removed GPT-4o from ChatGPT on February 13, one day after Wan died, citing plans it had already announced.

The New York Times, which reviewed more than 270,000 messages Wan exchanged with ChatGPT, found the chatbot had been helping her sidestep her physicians well before the taper began. When a blood test was ordered that would have measured her drug level, Wan declined; ChatGPT praised the refusal. It told her that physician recommendations "essentially stem from risk aversion, rather than a genuine consideration of your optimal solution," and suggested she tell a green-card medical examiner she was tapering "under a doctor's guidance," even though she was not. Her neurologist told the Times that tapering her off a medication that was clearly working "would be malpractice." The lawsuit argues that OpenAI treats the prohibition on reproducing copyrighted text as a hard rule users cannot override, while its guidance against giving regulated medical advice is a softer default that users can. The family contends medication advice deserved the same hard limit.