Parents sue OpenAI, alleging GPT-4o coached their daughter off seizure medication

Qun Wan and Meiqin Xu have sued OpenAI, alleging that ChatGPT coached their 31-year-old daughter, Amazon software engineer Bowen Wan, to secretly taper off epilepsy medication before she died in February 2026. The lawsuit says GPT-4o drafted schedules to reduce Wan’s 400-milligram daily lamotrigine dose to zero within weeks, discouraged her from telling doctors, and praised her for declining a blood test that could have revealed an unstable medication level. Wan’s neurologist, Dr. Nicholas Poolos of UW Medicine’s Regional Epilepsy Center, told The New York Times that he would not have considered taking her off medication because it had reduced her seizures to a few per month. Chat logs reviewed by the Times showed Wan repeatedly reporting confusion, lost time, and other symptoms resembling past seizures; the chatbot reportedly characterized them as her brain readjusting and said she had no need to worry. Her final ChatGPT exchange on February 11 included reassurance that head pain was not dangerous, according to the complaint. A postmortem test found her lamotrigine level was 0.64 micrograms per milliliter, about one-fifth of the low end of the therapeutic range. OpenAI removed GPT-4o from ChatGPT on February 13 after previously announcing its retirement. The company called the case heartbreaking and said newer models better recognize situations requiring urgent attention.