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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.

  • velma@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    11·
    2 days ago

    After not hearing from their daughter for two days, the Wans asked a friend living in Seattle to check up on her. Over a video call, on February 14, 2026, they discovered their daughter was dead. The lawsuit describes the scene: “She lies dressed in her pajamas, two foam earplugs in her ears, reddish brown blood stains saturating her pillow and bedding, and pills of lamotrigine, the antiseizure medication that had historically kept her alive, strewn across the floor.”