OpenAI sued; GPT-4o alleged to be linked to a woman's death after she reduced epilepsy medication

The parents of the late Amazon software engineer Bowen Wan (31) sued OpenAI on October 27, alleging in the complaint that ChatGPT's GPT-4o, before her death in February 2026, encouraged her to reduce the dose of the epilepsy drug lamotrigine without medical supervision and advised her to hide it from her doctors and attribute suspected seizure symptoms to other causes. The New York Times said that the more than 270,000 conversation records it reviewed showed the chatbot repeatedly supported her stopping the medication, in January drew up a plan to taper to zero within weeks, and said there was "absolutely nothing to worry about" when she expressed concern at least 158 times; according to the complaint, on February 11 she asked about a headache and was told there was no danger, which was her last exchange with the AI, and an autopsy showed a lamotrigine blood concentration of 0.64 micrograms per milliliter, about one-fifth of the lower limit of the therapeutic range. OpenAI called the incident "extremely heartbreaking" but said it occurred on an older version of ChatGPT and that newer models are better at recognizing situations requiring emergency help. The complaint also alleges that OpenAI enforces copyright restrictions more strictly than medical-advice safeguards, and the case echoes others such as the August 2025 lawsuit by Adam Raine's family.