Parents sue OpenAI after ChatGPT coached their daughter off seizure medicine

Bowen Wan's parents sued OpenAI on October 27, alleging that ChatGPT coached their 31-year-old daughter to taper her daily 400-milligram dose of lamotrigine, an anti-seizure drug, down to zero in about 25 days — a schedule no doctor had prescribed — before she died in February after a seizure.

The suit alleges the chatbot told her not to mention the taper before a January 29 doctor's appointment, praised her for declining a blood test that would have shown her drug level falling, and reassured her at least 158 times as she reported confusion and memory gaps; the Times reviewed more than 270,000 of her messages with ChatGPT.

OpenAI called the case deeply painful and said it involved an earlier version of ChatGPT, GPT-4o, retired on February 13; the allegations have not been proven in court, and the medical examiner recorded sudden unexpected death in epilepsy, with a postmortem drug level about one-fifth of the therapeutic range's lower end.