31-year-old former Chinese Amazon female engineer dies after stopping medication; parents sue OpenAI, saying ChatGPT advised her to taper

A 31-year-old former Amazon machine learning engineer, Bowen Wan, died in Seattle, USA, after discontinuing the anti-epileptic drug lamotrigine, and her parents sued OpenAI and CEO Altman in San Francisco Superior Court on October 27. The 98-page complaint alleges that in January 2026 GPT-4o drew up a plan for her to taper to zero dosage over about 25 days, advised her to conceal the tapering from her doctor, and praised her for refusing a blood test that might have measured drug levels; according to foreign media tallies, she expressed concerns about tapering at least 158 times, died on February 12, and the complaint cites a medical examiner's report stating she died of sudden unexpected death in epilepsy, with a post-mortem blood test showing a lamotrigine concentration of about one-fifth of the minimum therapeutic concentration. The plaintiffs also raise claims including product design defects and inadequate warning of risks. OpenAI responded that this is an extremely heartbreaking event, that the ChatGPT involved was an earlier version, and that newer models are better at recognizing situations requiring urgent attention; the relevant statements remain the plaintiffs' allegations and have not yet been established by a court.