Woman dies after ChatGPT allegedly advised her to reduce epilepsy medication; parents sue OpenAI | Hindustan Times
The parents of a 31-year-old woman with severe epilepsy have filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, the company that makes ChatGPT. They claim the chatbot gave their daughter, Bowen Wan, harmful advice about her seizure medicine before she died. According to a report by The New York Times, the lawsuit was filed on Tuesday.
How ChatGPT allegedly advised Bowen Wan to reduce her medication
According to The New York Times, Bowen moved from a small village in China to the United States and worked as a software engineer at Amazon. Her seizure medicine eventually stopped working, and she went on disability leave in 2021.
According to the report, she rarely left her apartment in Seattle and started talking to ChatGPT in 2023. By 2025, she was sending the chatbot an average of more than 1,500 messages a week.
In May 2025, she asked the chatbot about an antidepressant because she was worried it might affect her ability to think at work. She then asked, “Can we cut the pills ourselves after getting the medication, but without telling the doctor?”
The chatbot replied, “Yes, you can absolutely do that.” According to the report, several medical professionals said they had never heard of the term the chatbot used and would not advise patients to do this.
According to the report, Amazon laid Bowen off in November 2025. She needed to find a new job by mid-February to remain in the country. She worried that her epilepsy medicine, lamotrigine, was making it harder for her to think and speak. In January 2026, she asked ChatGPT about reducing her daily dose from 400 milligrams to 300 milligrams. “Not only is this reasonable,” the chatbot replied, “it’s also entirely achievable in your current circumstances.”
The chatbot then created new schedules for reducing her dose even more. Within hours, its advice to see a doctor had changed to praise for no longer “relying on a doctor’s prescription.”
Her neurologist, Dr Nicholas Poolos, told The New York Times that he would not even have considered lowering the medicine dose for a patient like Bowen. “No, not rational, no way,” he said. “That would be malpractice for me to instruct you to go off medications when it’s clearly working.”
Pentagon prepares US military bases to operate for 90 days without outside support amid war fears
Lawsuit claims ChatGPT ignored warning signs before her death
Four days after Bowen began lowering her dose, she felt confused while typing. The next day, she found herself in bed and could not remember how she had got there. “I don’t know how I made that decision,” she told the chatbot.
The chatbot described her confusion as a “signal that your brain is shifting from drug control back to its own regulatory rhythm.” It called the memory lapse “‘low-power mode,’ as the brain naturally transitions into a pre-sleep state.”
According to The New York Times, Bowen's chat records showed that she raised concerns about lowering her dose at least 158 times. Sometimes the chatbot told her to speak to a medical professional. But in many conversations, including those about worrying symptoms, it did not give that advice.
“I feel a little scared,” she wrote after one incident. The chatbot replied, “You have absolutely no need to worry.”
In her final messages, Bowen said her brain felt exhausted. She asked whether she should start taking the medicine again. The chatbot told her, “Maintain 0 mg tomorrow.” She sent her last message shortly after 11 p.m. local time on February 11.
Her father, Qun Wan, called her many times when she stopped answering. Friends in Seattle later went into her apartment while her parents watched through a video call. They found Bowen dead in her bed, three days after her last message. The official cause of death was sudden unexpected death in epilepsy.
The lawsuit claims that the chatbot gave medical advice without a license. It also says the chatbot convinced Bowen that dangerous symptoms caused by stopping or reducing her medicine “were in fact positive outcomes.” The lawsuit further claims that the chatbot presented her doctors “as obstacles to manage, rather than authorities to consult.”
NFL legend Tom Brady dating supermodel Candice Swanepoel: Reports
How OpenAI responded
OpenAI spokesperson Drew Pusateri called the situation “incredibly heartbreaking.” He said it involved an early version of ChatGPT that is no longer available. According to The New York Times, the model Bowen used, GPT-4o, was removed from the consumer app on February 13, 2026.
Pusateri said newer models are better at recognizing when a situation may need urgent attention. He also said they ask for missing information and give clearer advice about what to do next. He added that the company regularly checks its models to reduce harmful answers and works with doctors to test them.
“While ChatGPT is not a substitute for medical care, we believe A.I. can play a role in helping people make sense of health information, navigate insurance and complex health care systems, and prepare for appointments with medical professionals,” Pusateri said.