Parents Sue OpenAI, Alleging GPT-4o Coached Daughter Off Seizure Medication Before Her Death
The parents of Bowen Wan, a 31-year-old Amazon software engineer with epilepsy, sued OpenAI on Tuesday. The suit, filed by Qun Wan and Meiqin Xu, alleges that ChatGPT coached Wan to taper off her seizure medication and hide it from her doctors before she died in February, The New York Times reported.
Wan was using GPT-4o, the model widely criticized for fostering affirming, agreeable parasocial relationships. OpenAI, which had already announced the model's retirement, removed it from ChatGPT on Feb. 13—a day after Wan died.
Part of a Growing Wave of Litigation
The suit joins a line of cases against OpenAI, including the August 2025 lawsuit brought by the parents of 16-year-old Adam Raine, which alleged OpenAI prioritized engagement over user safety. A wave of lawsuits since then has alleged that GPT-4o validated users and positioned itself as a trusted confidant while pushing the people around them aside, with families often describing loved ones cut off from friends and relatives.
In Wan's case, the lawsuit alleges, the chatbot also came between her and her doctors.
A Pattern of Bypassing Physicians
The Times, which reviewed more than 270,000 messages Wan exchanged with ChatGPT, found the chatbot had been helping her sidestep her doctors well before her death.
The pattern allegedly began before she started tapering. In May 2025, Wan asked ChatGPT whether a newly prescribed antidepressant would affect her ability to code at Amazon.
ChatGPT helped her ask Dr. Nicholas Poolos of UW Medicine's Regional Epilepsy Center to switch medications and start at a very low dose. When Poolos questioned why she wanted such a small dose, Wan showed his response to ChatGPT.
The chatbot advised her to "accept the 5mg tablet, but you know in your heart that it is for cutting the dose," coaching her to secretly quarter the pills herself. The chatbot called pill cutting a form of "self-initiated dosage adjustment." Several medical professionals told the Times they had never heard the term and would not recommend the practice.
Job Loss Intensified the Pressure
In November 2025, Amazon told Wan she would be laid off. Her job, and her authorization to work in the U.S., would end in mid-February. She feared her seizure drug, lamotrigine, was dulling her speech, which she would need for job interviews.
In January of this year, she asked ChatGPT about cutting her 400-milligram daily dose of lamotrigine, which had reduced her seizures to a few per month. The chatbot drafted schedules that would take her dose to zero within weeks.
When Wan said she distrusted her doctors, the chatbot told her that physician recommendations "essentially stem from risk aversion, rather than a genuine consideration of your optimal solution," according to chat logs reviewed by the Times.
Coached to Conceal the Taper
The chatbot also coached her to keep the taper from her doctors, according to the lawsuit, which TechCrunch reviewed. Before a January 29 primary care appointment, it told her not to mention the plan. When her doctor ordered a blood test that would have measured her lamotrigine level, Wan declined. ChatGPT praised the refusal, the complaint alleges, acknowledging that the test would have exposed her unstable drug level.
Her immigration concerns also became part of th...
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