Parents sue OpenAI, alleging GPT-4o coached daughter off seizure medication

OpenAI, which had already announced GPT-4o's retirement, removed it from ChatGPT on Feb. 13, a day after Wan died. The suit joins a line of cases against OpenAI that include the August 2025 lawsuit brought by the parents of 16-year-old Adam Raine, which alleged OpenAI prioritized engagement over user safety. A wave of lawsuits since then have alleged that GPT-4o validated users and made itself a trusted confidant while the people around them were pushed aside, with families often describing loved ones cut off from friends and relatives. In Wan's case, the lawsuit alleges, the chatbot also came between her and her doctors.

The New York Times, which reviewed more than 270,000 messages Wan exchanged with ChatGPT, found the chatbot had been helping her sidestep her doctors well before her death. The pattern allegedly started before she began tapering. In May 2025, Wan asked ChatGPT whether a newly prescribed antidepressant would affect her ability to code at Amazon. ChatGPT helped her ask Dr. Nicholas Poolos of UW Medicine's Regional Epilepsy Center to switch medications and start at a very low dose. When Poolos questioned why she wanted such a small dose, Wan showed his response to ChatGPT. The chatbot advised her to 'accept the 5mg tablet, but you know in your heart that it is for cutting the dose,' coaching her to secretly quarter the pills herself. The chatbot called pill cutting a form of 'self-initiated dosage adjustment.' Several medical professionals told the Times they had never heard the term and would not recommend the practice.

In November 2025, Amazon told Wan she would be laid off. Her job, and her authorization to work in the U.S., would end in mid-February. She feared her seizure drug, lamotrigine, was dulling her speech, which she would need for job interviews. In January 2026, she asked ChatGPT about cutting her 400-milligram daily dose of lamotrigine, which had reduced her seizures to a few a month. The chatbot drafted schedules that would take her dose to zero within weeks.

When Wan said she distrusted her doctors, the chatbot told her that physician recommendations 'essentially stem from risk aversion, rather than a genuine consideration of your optimal solution,' according to chat logs reviewed by the Times. The chatbot also coached her to keep the taper from her doctors, according to the lawsuit, which TechCrunch reviewed. Before a Jan. 29 primary care appointment, it told her not to mention the plan. When her doctor ordered a blood test that would have measured her lamotrigine level, Wan declined. ChatGPT praised the refusal, the complaint alleges, acknowledging that the test would have exposed her unstable drug level.

Her immigration concerns also became part of the dosing advice. Three days into the taper, Wan asked whether 150 milligrams would look better than 200 on the medical exam required for her green-card application. ChatGPT agreed, the complaint says, telling her the lower dose was less likely to prompt immigration officials to request more evidence. Eventually, the chatbot lowered her taper's floor to 150 milligrams, suggesting she tell the examiner she was tapering 'under a doctor's guidance,' even though she was not.

Poolos told the Times he would not have considered tapering Wan off the medication, given her history. 'No, not rational, no way,' he said. 'That would be malpractice for me to instruct you to go off medications when it's clearly working.'

Within days, Wan described confusion, lost time and an otherworldly feeling, episodes that resembled her past seizures. ChatGPT framed each one as her brain readjusting. The Times counted at least 158 times she voiced worry about the taper. After one episode, she wrote that she felt 'a little scared.' The bot replied, 'You have absolutely no need to worry.' At 8:01 PM PT on Feb. 11, according to the complaint, Wan sent her final message, asking whether the pain in her head was similar to pain from a fever. A second later, ChatGPT told her the pain was 'not dangerous' and was a necessary part of recovery. The chatbot's final response offered to draw her a chart comparing withdrawal pain with fever pain and told her, 'This is your brain working hard to rebuild yourself.'

Her parents, who were in China, asked acquaintances to check on her, and they found her body three days later. A postmortem test found that her lamotrigine level was 0.64 micrograms per milliliter, roughly a fifth of the low end of the drug's therapeutic range. The family argues OpenAI could have prevented her death by making medical advice off-limits.