Bowen Wan’s family has filed a lawsuit against ChatGPT’s parent company, claiming the bot told her to taper off her epilepsy medication, which led to her death
The family of a woman who died after she stopped taking her epilepsy medication has filed a lawsuit against an AI company they claim encouraged her to taper off taking the lifesaving drug.
Bowen Wan began messaging ChatGPT in February 2023, finding companionship in the AI bot, The New York Times reports. She was 28 and living in Seattle, far from her native rural Chinese village, Jiangsu. She asked the chatbot for medical advice after her severe epilepsy led to disability leave from her software job at Amazon.
When she was then laid off in November 2025, Wan began searching for a new job so she could maintain her green card — but was concerned that the side effects of her epilepsy medication, lamotrigine, might impact her ability to work. The lawsuit claims ChatGPT advised her to taper off taking the lamotrigine.
It sounds like she suffered from stupidity and not just epilepsy. Where the fuck was her family when she actually needed them?
question: do you believe that stupid people deserve to die?
What they deserve is irrelevant. We’re talking about the validity of the lawsuit.
Desperate people do desperate things.
They need to update the article on some inaccuracies. Being unemployed is not an issue as a permanent resident (green card). Claiming unemployment benefits however can affect a future citizenship application. She was most likely on an H1B visa which is employment dependent. And that is stressful because you have to leave if you can’t find a new employer willing to sponsor you within 40(?) days.
Not arguing with you or anything, just providing clarification for anyone wondering.
She was just ready to apply for a green card. So yes, her future green card did depend on it.
I don’t really want to go further into semantics over the circumstances of a death, but the article literally says:
…which does not mean “future green card”
Fair enough, I’m going off the top comment that’s based on a more detailed NYT article that provides the detail I mentioned. I’m guessing that’s more accurate since it makes more sense.
She was probably on an H1-B visa, you’re right.
Nope. This wasn’t desperation. It was stupidity. You’re on life saving drugs- and a computer program tells you to disregard a doctors orders and drop taking said life saving medication?
That’s stupidity.
Without being disrespectful, ignorance definitely played a role here, and chatgpt exacerbated that. She stopped taking anti-seizure meds because she was forgetting words in job interviews. She seemed to think that she was forgetting words because of the lamotrigine. This isn’t a side effect of lamotrigine, but it is a main effect of epilepsy. If anything, she probably needed to be on a higher dose of lamotrigine.
Maybe she wouldn’t have been as desperate if her family had given a fuck about her before she died… now they just see dollar signs and a way to shift the blame. I have empathy for her, but not her family.
Anything to avoid blaming AI huh
Anything TO blame AI huh
Ohhh how long did it take your sick ass local model to cook that one up for you?
Pretty sure her family was still in China while she was here in Seattle.
When did the ability for people in China and the U.S. to communicate come into effect?
How would they have known at the time she was seeking medical advice like this unless she told them?
You’re making a lot of assumptions in order to smear a dead woman.
Well… they figured out she was dead somehow… I’m assuming they could have also found out she was alive and how she was doing. In any case, this tragedy has nothing to do with technology. Blame the US health system. Blame ignorance.
Try reading the article before spouting off in the comments next time.
Don’t bother. This person has an agenda. They will not change their mind.
You are obviously correct.
Ah - so, in fact, they could have been in contact with her sooner and possibly saved her life. Sucks to be them. Still not the internet’s fault.
the AI takes advantage of people in bad situations, people in bad situations are very impressionable and make a lot of mistakes. this is human nature being used to harm people.
This is just stupid… if you need a doctor, then go to a doctor; not the internet.
People in the US can literally go bankrupt by going to the doctor.
And that’s assuming they have health insurance and can find a doctor who will take them.
Absolutely true. That doesn’t mean that you start suing random entities because you got bad advice from a non-qualified source.
she had a doctor, an AI chat bot convinced her to stop taking her meds, this is in the article…
She should have listened to her doctor… That’s what they’re there for.
If you convince someone in a very difficult situation in their life to harm themselves to death, you’ll be in trouble. designing software that did this should also result in consequences, not sure why you need to blame the victim. pretty gross.
People do completely stupid shit because they read their horoscope. That doesn’t mean that they have a case to sue the maker of the horoscope.
Tell us more about how you’ve clearly never struggled a day in your life.
We get it you’ve never had to do anything desperate.
Congratulations.
Desperate people do stupid things. That is not the fault of the internet. Try to stay on topic.
The companies that are running shit like ChatGPT are supporting and being financially supported by the same government that put this women in the place she was, and that’s without mentioning her own workplace being fucking awful.
If you cannot understand that all of these things, especially the corporatization of our government, and the unnecessary suffering of it’s citizens, are directly related to capitalist assholes and companies like Open AI, then you’re an idiot and there is no helping you.
I understand all those things and the fact that those things don’t mean fuck-all to the situation. Someone stupidly put their trust in the wrong place. You seem to understand that you shouldn’t trust AI. Maybe you’re less stupid than she was.
I’d be right there with you if you wanted to stick to the narrative that the entire for-profit healthcare system is fucked up in the U.S. and needs to change. Outside of her personal responsibility, that is where blame really lies.
9000km away across the Pacific Ocean
can’t even rtfa when it’s in the post body
They certainly had some way to find out she’s dead…
what do you expect them to be able to do anyway? you think her rural Chinese family has a back-channel to the bigwigs in the US pharma industry? or maybe their neighbors run a lamotrigine farm?
They might be able to tell her to get off of the fucking internet and to not kill herself…
you think the issue is she simply hadn’t considered not dying? either she lowers the dose to try to make it last until she figures something out, or she doesn’t lower the dose and she runs out and can’t get more. the core problem is she needs medicine and has no way to get it, how is her family supposed to solve that for her?
god you’re a fucking moron
That’s absolutely not what happened. Nothing to do with access to health care or cost of medicine.
She was losing her ability to speak and attributed that to a side effect of the medication. An AI told her to stop taking it so she did.
You’re saying the right words. Now re-read until you understand what you said.
When you understand what you said, you’ll agree with me that ChatGPT has nothing to do with it and that this lawsuit is bullshit.
Are you being paid by OpenAI to astroturf or something? Or do you really just enjoy the taste of the boot?
No, I just really dislike stupid people who can’t understand such simple concepts. Once again, for the stupid people, AI has nothing to do with the situation. The person in question could have just as easily have read a bumper sticker and decided the universe was talking to them.
No your being ridiculous, a corporation made software and tells people to use it for exactly this, life advice, counciling, things it absolutely shouldn’t be used for, and there’s no warning ‘hay this is a word generator with no intelligence or ability to grasp it’s giving dangerous advice to people with life threatening problems’ the people making the software should very clearly be made accountable. your need to defend corporations and blame a dead woman isn’t logical.
People should quit believing everything they see/read. They should also go to a doctor to get their medical advice instead of to some friend group or internet search.