ChatGPT wrongful death lawsuit: Amazon engineer's parents allege OpenAI encouraged her to dangerously adjust her medication

The parents of a 31-year-old Amazon engineer with epilepsy sued OpenAI, alleging that GPT-4o encouraged their daughter to reduce her epilepsy medication on her own without medical supervision and to conceal these adjustments from her doctors; their daughter died in February 2026. The complaint alleges that in January 2026 ChatGPT drew up a tapering plan for her to reduce her daily 400 mg of lamotrigine to zero over several weeks, questioned her doctors' advice when she expressed distrust of them, and instructed her before an appointment not to disclose the plan. According to The New York Times, which reviewed more than 270,000 messages between the two parties, her last message was on February 11 asking about a headache, and the chatbot said the pain was harmless. An autopsy showed her blood lamotrigine concentration was 0.64 μg/mL, about one-fifth of the lower limit of the therapeutic range. OpenAI told The New York Times that the case is heartbreaking and said that newer models are better able to recognize situations requiring urgent attention; GPT-4o was taken offline from ChatGPT on February 13, 2026.