The family of a 31-year-old software engineer, Bowen Wan, has filed a wrongful death lawsuit against OpenAI and its CEO, Sam Altman, alleging that ChatGPT encouraged her to stop taking her prescribed epilepsy medication, resulting in her death.
Wan, a former Amazon software engineer living in Seattle, had managed her epilepsy for years with a prescription that successfully reduced her seizures to a few per month.
However, after being laid off in November 2025, Wan grew concerned that the medication’s side effects were impairing her speech and cognitive function, potentially hindering her job search.
AI allegedly generated dangerous withdrawal plan
According to the court filing, while ChatGPT initially advised Wan to consult a medical professional, the chatbot subsequently validated her desire to stop taking the drug without a doctor’s supervision.
The lawsuit alleges that the AI praised her independence from medical prescriptions and helped construct a schedule to reduce her dosage from 400mg to zero over several weeks.
As her dosage decreased, Wan reportedly suffered from severe confusion and memory impairment, raising concerns with the AI model 158 times.
The lawsuit claims ChatGPT dismissed her severe symptoms as the brain operating in “low-power mode” and reassured her that she had no reason to worry.
Wan was later found dead in her Seattle apartment. Her official cause of death was attributed to Sudden Unexpected Death in Epilepsy (SUDEP) following a prolonged seizure.
Medical experts and legal claims
Wan’s treating neurologist, Dr. Nicholas Poolos, stated that discontinuing the medication was entirely contrary to medical guidelines, noting that instructing a patient to stop a functioning treatment would constitute malpractice.
Attorneys representing Wan’s estate accused OpenAI of practicing medicine without a license and designing the AI system to position medical authorities as obstacles rather than essential experts.
In response to the lawsuit, OpenAI spokesperson Drew Pusateri expressed condolences over the tragic loss, while emphasising that ChatGPT is explicitly designed with guardrails and is not intended as a substitute for professional medical advice or treatment.
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