A woman’s death from an epileptic seizure after receiving dangerous advice from a chatbot prompted her parents to sue OpenAI earlier this week.
The lawsuit is the latest lawsuit in which plaintiffs allege that a robot provided advice to a user that ultimately led to their death.
In that case, Bowen Wan, a 31-year-old Chinese software engineer living in Seattle, sought advice from ChatGPT after Amazon fired her, according to the lawsuit.
She needed to find a new job to obtain permanent residency and was concerned that her anti-epileptic medication, lamotrigine, would interfere with her ability to speak English. She needed language skills for interviews.
The robot, communicating in Chinese, provided him with a step-down schedule to reduce his 400 mg dose to zero, a regimen that no doctor had prescribed, the lawsuit says. ChatGPT told her the reduction made it “very likely” that she would be able to regain her ability to speak English.
The robot also told him to avoid his doctors and encouraged “medical freedom to obey the doctor,” the complaint states.
Before an appointment with a primary care doctor, the robot said, “Don’t mention Lam’s reduction plan. »
While reducing her medication, she began experiencing symptoms of focal seizures. Wan asked the robot if she should worry about brain damage. The tool reassured her that this was not the case and that what she experienced was not a crisis, according to the lawsuit.
She continued to suffer seizures, but the robot told her to continue tapering off her medication. On February 12 this year, she died after suffering a seizure. Her parents, who were in China, had not heard from her so they flew to Seattle and found her dead on Feb. 14, the lawsuit states.
The plaintiffs say OpenAI could have prevented Wan’s death but failed because it did not build proper protections into the robot when it communicated in Chinese.
OpenAI could have programmed the robot to issue “a categorical warning at every prompt” sent by Wan, the suit says. For example, “I am not a licensed physician. Consult your health care provider.”
Wan’s parents are seeking damages for his death and to stop OpenAI from practicing medicine “without a license on users of their products.”
An OpenAI spokesperson, Drew Pusateri, told the New York Times that Bowen’s story was “an incredibly heartbreaking situation” but that Wan was using a version of ChatGPT that was no longer available.
Newer versions are better at recognizing when an issue needs urgent attention, Pusateri said.
“While ChatGPT is not a replacement for medical care, we believe AI can play a role in helping people understand health information, navigate complex insurance and health systems, and prepare for appointments with medical professionals,” Pusateri told the Times.
Others also claimed that OpenAI was responsible for their loved ones’ suicide. Several lawsuits involve cases in which the robot encouraged teenagers to commit suicide and provided advice on how to do so.
In response to some of these cases, an OpenAI spokesperson also called the deaths in 2025 “an incredibly heartbreaking situation.”
Gn bussni
