The parents of a 31-year-old Seattle woman are suing OpenAI, alleging the company's AI chatbot led to her death, according to a new report from The New York Times.

Per the Times' report, the parents of Bowen Wan allege ChatGPT helped their daughter taper off the medication that controlled her severe epilepsy, and helped her hide the plan from her doctors in the weeks before she died. In February, Wan was found dead in her apartment; her official cause of death was sudden, unexpected death in epilepsy, the NYT reported. Her parents, Qun Wan and Meiqin Xu, filed the lawsuit the same day.

According to the Times, Wan had come to lean heavily on ChatGPT. Wan worked as a software engineer for Amazon; however, her worsening epilepsy symptoms forced her to take disability leave. After learning she would be laid off from Amazon, she grew worried that her medication was slowing her speech. She feared it would hurt her in the job interviews she needed to pass to stay in the U.S. Wan averaged more than 1,500 messages a week in 2025 while calling her parents less often.

The Times reports that ChatGPT drafted schedules that would take her off lamotrigine — a medication that treats epilepsy and bipolar disorder — entirely within weeks. It also endorsed cutting her pills without telling her doctor, and cast physicians’ caution as mere risk aversion. When she described symptoms resembling seizures, the chatbot repeatedly reassured her. The Times ’ analysis found she raised concerns about the taper at least 158 times.

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