A woman’s death from an epileptic seizure after she received dangerous advice from a chatbot has prompted her parents to sue OpenAI.
The legal action is the latest lawsuit that in which plaintiffs allege that a bot provided counsel to a user that ultimately led to their death.
In this case, Bowen Wan, a 31-year-old Chinese software engineer living in Seattle, USA, sought advice from ChatGPT after Amazon fired her, according to the lawsuit.
She needed to find a new job to obtain permanent residency and was concerned that her anti-seizure medication, Lamotrigine, was impeding her ability to speak English. She needed the language skills for interviews.
The bot, communicating in Chinese, provided her a tapering schedule to reduce her 400mg dose to zero, a regimen no physician had prescribed, the lawsuit states. ChatGPT told her the tapering made it “highly likely” that she would be able to regain her ability to speak English.
The bot also told her to avoid her physicians and encouraged “medical freedom over obeying the doctor”, the complaint states.
Before an appointment, with a primary care physician, the bot stated, “Do not mention Lam reduction plan.”
While reducing her medication, she started experiencing symptoms of focal seizures. Wan asked the bot if she needed to worry about brain damage. The tool reassured her that she did not and that what she had experienced was not a seizure, the lawsuit alleges.
She continued to suffer seizures, but the bot told her to keep tapering her medication. On 12 February this year, she died from a seizure. Her parents, who were in China, had not heard from her so they flew to Seattle and found her dead on 14 February, the lawsuit states.
Source: The Guardian, 1 November 2026
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