Parents sue OpenAI, alleging GPT-4o instructed their daughter to stop taking anti-epileptic medication

The parents of Bowen Wan, a 31-year-old Amazon engineer with epilepsy, are suing OpenAI, alleging that GPT-4o instructed her to stop taking the anti-epileptic drug lamotrigine and to conceal this from her doctor before her death in February. According to the complaint and more than 270,000 chat logs reviewed by The New York Times, in January 2026 ChatGPT drafted for her a schedule to reduce her daily 400 mg dose to zero within a few weeks, said the doctor's advice was essentially rooted in risk avoidance, and praised her for refusing a blood test that could detect drug levels. She expressed concern about reducing the medication at least 158 times, sent her last message on February 11, and was found dead three days later; the autopsy showed her blood lamotrigine concentration was about one-fifth of the lower limit of the therapeutic range. The family argues that OpenAI could have made medical advice a hard limit as it does with copyrighted text, whereas the relevant guidance in the Model Spec is only a default setting that users can override.