OpenAI faces lawsuit over ChatGPT allegedly linked to Amazon engineer's death

OpenAI is being sued by the parents of Amazon engineer Bowen Wan; the complaint alleges that ChatGPT advised the 31-year-old engineer, who had epilepsy, to reduce her anti-seizure medication dose without doctor supervision and to conceal it from her doctor, and Wan died in February 2026. According to The New York Times' review of more than 270,000 messages between the two, ChatGPT long helped her circumvent her doctor before her death and drew up a plan for her to taper her daily 400 mg lamotrigine dose to zero within weeks, and praised her for refusing a blood test that could detect drug levels; she expressed concern at least 158 times, and ChatGPT repeatedly told her not to worry. On February 11 she last asked about head pain, and ChatGPT said it was not dangerous; an autopsy found her lamotrigine level far below the therapeutic range. She was using GPT-4o, and OpenAI removed the model from ChatGPT on February 13, 2026, one day after her death, saying the case was "extremely heartbreaking" and involved an older version, and that newer models are better at recognizing situations requiring urgent attention.