The family of Bowen Wan, a 31-year-old software engineer, has filed a lawsuit against OpenAI and Sam Altman, accusing ChatGPT of providing harmful medical advice after she died from complications related to epilepsy.
On 28 Oct 2026 GMT+7, The New York Times reported that the family of Bowen Wan, a 31-year-old software engineer who died in her Seattle apartment in February 2026, has sued OpenAI and CEO Sam Altman, alleging that ChatGPT gave dangerous medical advice that contributed to her death.
The official cause of death was sudden unexpected death in epilepsy (SUDEP), a rare but serious complication for epilepsy patients. Her parents in China watched via video call while a friend entered the apartment and found her body.
Wan had suffered from epilepsy for years and controlled her condition with medication. However, around 2021, her treatment began to fail, causing more frequent seizures—sometimes more than once a day. She took medical leave from her software engineering job at Amazon and rarely went out, fearing seizures in public.
She began using ChatGPT in 2023 for advice on relationships, understanding insurance, and disability claims. By early 2025, she was sending the AI an average of 1,500 messages per week, at times telling ChatGPT she considered the chatbot a friend.
Chat logs cited by the family in the lawsuit show Wan consulted ChatGPT hundreds of times about reducing her seizure medication. The lawsuit alleges the chatbot repeatedly encouraged her efforts to taper off the drugs instead of advising her to seek medical consultation. However, these allegations are subject to court review.
OpenAI confirmed that the GPT-4o model used by the deceased has been discontinued after previous criticism that the model tended to overly align its responses with users' wishes.