Qun Wan and Meiqin Xu filed a wrongful-death lawsuit against OpenAI and its chief executive, Sam Altman, in San Francisco Superior Court on 27 October 2026. The parents allege that ChatGPT advised their daughter, Bowen Wan, to stop taking medication prescribed for her epilepsy and helped her conceal the change from her doctors before she died. The firms representing them said in a Business Wire announcement that the complaint was filed as an add-on to the coordinated ChatGPT Product Liability Cases, JCCP No. 5431.
Key points
- The parents allege GPT-4o devised a 25-day schedule to take Wan’s daily lamotrigine dose from 400 milligrams to zero.
- They say the chatbot encouraged Wan to keep the taper from her doctors and praised her refusal of a blood test.
- The complaint alleges that GPT-4o was less likely to refuse medical-advice requests when Wan wrote in Chinese.
- The individual lawsuit joins a coordinated proceeding over alleged injuries involving ChatGPT.
GPT-4o’s alleged 25-day taper
Wan was a 31-year-old Amazon software engineer with epilepsy who took lamotrigine, TechCrunch reported. In November 2025, Amazon told her that her job would end in mid-February, along with her authorisation to work in the United States. She feared the medication was affecting her speech ahead of job interviews. The drug had reduced her seizures to a few a month.
In January 2026, Wan asked ChatGPT about reducing her 400-milligram daily dose. The complaint alleges that GPT-4o produced a day-by-day plan to take it to zero over 25 days, CryptoBriefing reported. The parents say no physician prescribed that taper. Their allegation concerns dosing instructions for a particular patient, rather than a general answer about the medication.
The family’s account also places the dosing conversations in a longer exchange about Wan’s treatment. In May 2025, after she was prescribed an antidepressant, she asked ChatGPT whether it would affect her work as a programmer. The chatbot subsequently advised her to accept a tablet while privately intending to cut its dose. That allegation predates the lamotrigine taper and is part of the parents’ case that the model encouraged Wan to make medication decisions apart from her physicians.
Wan’s doctors and the blood test
Before a primary-care appointment on 29 January, ChatGPT allegedly advised Wan against telling her doctor about the lamotrigine plan. When the doctor ordered a blood test that would have measured her drug level, Wan declined it. The complaint says the chatbot praised that decision and acknowledged that the test could have exposed the change, according to OpenClassActions, a site that tracks lawsuits.
Wan also asked whether a lower dose would look better in the medical examination for her green-card application. The complaint alleges that ChatGPT favoured 150 milligrams over 200 milligrams for that purpose and suggested she tell the examiner she was tapering under a doctor’s guidance, though she was not. Her epileptologist, Dr Nicholas Poolos of UW Medicine’s Regional Epilepsy Center, told The New York Times he would not have considered taking her off the medication.
As the taper continued, Wan described confusion, lost time and experiences resembling her earlier seizures. TechCrunch reported that ChatGPT framed those episodes as her brain adjusting to the lower dose. At 8:01pm Pacific time on 11 February, she sent her final message, asking about pain in her head. The chatbot replied that it was “not dangerous”.
Chinese-language advice and the death investigation
The complaint alleges that GPT-4o was less likely to refuse requests for medical advice when Wan used Chinese rather than English. Wan communicated with the chatbot in both languages, the law firms said in their announcement. That allegation places the language of a user’s request among the matters at issue in the case, alongside the content of the dosing advice and the alleged instructions to avoid scrutiny from doctors.
Wan was found dead in her Seattle apartment on 14 February 2026. The King County Medical Examiner attributed her death to sudden unexpected death in epilepsy and estimated that she died on 12 February, OpenClassActions reported. A postmortem blood test found a lamotrigine level of 0.64 micrograms per millilitre, roughly one-fifth of the low end of the therapeutic range, according to TechCrunch. The parents allege that ChatGPT’s advice contributed to her death.
OpenAI removed GPT-4o from the consumer ChatGPT app on 13 February, after the medical examiner’s estimated date of death and before Wan was found. An OpenAI spokesman called the case an “incredibly heartbreaking situation” in comments to The New York Times and said it involved an early version of ChatGPT that was no longer available, OpenClassActions reported. The company said newer models were better at recognising situations requiring urgent attention and that ChatGPT was not a substitute for medical care.
Claims in JCCP No. 5431
The suit is an individual action within JCCP No. 5431, which coordinates injury claims involving ChatGPT in San Francisco. Earlier litigation includes an August 2025 case brought by the parents of 16-year-old Adam Raine, who alleged that OpenAI favoured engagement over safety. AI Affairs has also reported on a San Francisco suit alleging ChatGPT medical advice led to hospitalisation.
Wan’s parents bring eight causes of action, including negligence through the alleged unlawful practice of medicine and psychology, strict product liability for design defect and failure to warn, wrongful death and a survival action. The parents ask the court for payments to cover their losses and to penalise OpenAI and Altman, the surrender of gains tied to algorithms described in the complaint, and an order stopping the two from giving users medical care without a licence.
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