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.
And I didn’t say something different. All I said is that if the system around her wouldn’t have pressured her so hard, we wouldn’t be there.
But, while we’re at it, picture this: She asks a friend. “Hey, I’m scared that i won’t get a job when taking this medication, and if i don’t get one fast, I’ll have to leave the country”. The friend then says “maybe just stop taking it until you’ve got a job” without knowing better.
Then we would have exactly the same situation. Why? Because she was terrified and desperate.
And before you get that wrong: I’m not comparing talking to AI, to talking to a friend.
I’m picturing a realistic scenario that may alternatively have happened. Same background, same outcome, just a different trigger for the outcome.
The system fucked her, it’s the cause. ChatGPT was just what loosened the hairpin trigger that could have been loosened by something else.
ChatGPT should be held accountable. It’s not a friend that just didn’t know any better and tried to comfort a loved one in an awful situation. But that wasn’t what my original message was about.
I don’t know what’s the point of deliberating what “the cause” is. Everything that happened contributed to her death, and that’s it. If a friend told her to stop medication, then that friend would be sued, too. Are you just try to fit this tragedy into your narrative so you can hang your slogan on it?
And secondly, if you can’t see ChatGPT as a simple extension to all the problems “the system” you kept talking about have, then you are blind. AI is a spectre that is haunting this world - a spectre of capitalism.