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.
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.