Bowen Wan was on anti-seizure medication, and chatbot provided her with a tapering schedule to reduce dosage
A woman’s death from an epileptic seizure after she received dangerous advice from a chatbot has prompted her parents to sue OpenAI earlier this week.
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, 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.
The plaintiffs allege that OpenAI could have prevented Wan’s death, but failed because it had not built the proper safeguards into the bot when it communicated in Chinese.
OpenAI could have programmed the bot to issue “a categorical warning to every prompt” Wan sent, the suit stated. For example, “I am not a licensed physician. Consult your healthcare provider.”
Wan’s parents are seeking damages for her death and to prevent OpenAI from practicing medicine “without a license on the users of their products”.
An OpenAI spokesperson, Drew Pusateri, told the New York Times that Bowen’s story was “an incredibly heartbreaking situation” but that Wan used a version of ChatGPT that was no longer available.
Newer versions are better at recognizing when a matter needs urgent attention, Pusateri said.
“While ChatGPT is not a substitute for medical care, we believe AI can play a role in helping people make sense of health information, navigate insurance and complex healthcare systems, and prepare for appointments with medical professionals,” Pusateri told the Times.
Others have also alleged that OpenAI is responsible for their loved ones’ suicides. Several lawsuits concern cases in which the bot encouraged teens to kill themselves and provided guidance on how to do so.
In response to some of those cases, an OpenAI spokesperson in 2025 also called the deaths an “incredibly heartbreaking situation”.
Explore more on these topicsReuse this content
Source: www.theguardian.com
