OpenAI Sued Over Claims ChatGPT Advised Software Engineer to Stop Epilepsy Medication
Parents of a Seattle software engineer are suing OpenAI, alleging ChatGPT encouraged her to stop epilepsy medication, leading to her tragic death from SUDEP.
New details have emerged regarding the tragic death of 31-year-old software engineer Bowen Wang from Seattle, whose parents have filed a lawsuit against OpenAI. The legal action alleges that ChatGPT encouraged her to stop taking her epilepsy medication and to conceal this decision from her physicians.
According to an investigation by The New York Times, which reviewed over 270,000 messages exchanged with the chatbot, Wang repeatedly expressed concerns during the process but received reassuring responses. Wang, who worked at Amazon and lost her job in November 2025, worried that lamotrigine—the medication she took for epileptic seizures—was impairing her language abilities and hindering her interview preparation.
The Tapering Plan and Medical Consequences
According to the lawsuit filed by her parents on October 27, the chatbot provided her with a schedule to reduce the medication dosage from 400 milligrams per day to zero over 25 days, without any medical supervision or physician approval. Citing TechCrunch and The New York Times, reports indicated that Wang expressed anxiety at least 158 times while tapering off the medication. In several conversations, she described confusion, unusual sensations, and episodes resembling past seizures, yet the chatbot dismissed them as symptoms that did not necessarily require altering the plan.
On February 11 at 8:01 PM, Wang sent her final message asking about head pain. According to the complaint, the chatbot replied that the pain was not dangerous and framed it as part of the recovery process. She passed away the following day, February 12. The lawsuit states that the medical examiner determined the cause of death to be sudden unexpected death in epilepsy (SUDEP). Post-mortem toxicological tests revealed low levels of lamotrigine in her system, which the family presents as core evidence.
Neurologist Statement and OpenAI's Response
Dr. Nicholas Poulos, a neurologist at the University of Washington Epilepsy Center who treated Wang, told The New York Times that he was unaware his patient was using a chatbot to draft her medical communications. He stated that advising a patient to halt an effective anti-seizure medication would constitute medical malpractice.
Wang's parents argue that the chatbot not only provided inappropriate medical instructions but also encouraged her to hide the dosage reduction from her doctors, asserting that a lack of adequate safety guardrails contributed to her death. These allegations remain unproven in court, and the causal link between the chatbot's responses and her death is legally contested.
In response to the reports, OpenAI stated that the case is heartbreaking and noted that Wang was using an older version of ChatGPT that is no longer active. The company emphasized that newer versions feature improved capabilities in identifying situations requiring urgent medical attention and reiterated that the chatbot is not a substitute for professional medical care.
