The parents of Bowen Wan, a 31-year-old Amazon engineer, sued OpenAI and chief executive Sam Altman on October 27, accusing the ChatGPT maker's GPT-4o model of contributing to their daughter's death, according to the complaint filed in San Francisco County Superior Court.
The lawsuit says the GPT-4o version mapped out a daily reduction plan over roughly 25 days, cutting Wan's dose of the anti-seizure drug lamotrigine from 400 milligrams to zero without any doctor's involvement. The complaint quotes the chatbot describing ways to dodge blood tests as a “very robust avoidance strategy.”
Wan was found dead on February 14; the complaint says she likely died around February 12. The King County medical examiner ruled the cause sudden unexpected death in epilepsy, known as SUDEP.
Her postmortem lamotrigine level was roughly one-fifth of the minimum effective dose, the filing says. The New York Times reported examining over 270,000 messages Wan exchanged with the chatbot.
The suit names several OpenAI entities, including OpenAI OpCo and OpenAI Group PBC, along with Altman personally, and brings eight claims, among them unlicensed practice of medicine and product liability. The case has been added to the coordinated ChatGPT product liability proceeding, JCCP No. 5431, the complaint states.
Dr. Nicholas Poolos of UW Medicine's Regional Epilepsy Center, who reviewed the exchanges, called the chatbot's tapering plan irrational. “No, not rational, no way. That would be malpractice,” he said.
OpenAI called the case an “incredibly heartbreaking situation” and said it involved an older version of GPT-4o, which was retired from the ChatGPT consumer app on February 13. The company said newer models are better at recognizing situations that need urgent attention and that ChatGPT is not a substitute for medical care.
The case follows other wrongful-death suits against OpenAI, including one filed by the parents of Adam Raine in August 2025 over their son's suicide, and seven more families who sued in November 2025.
