THE ESSENTIALS IN 30 SECONDS

  • The parents of Bowen Wan, who died in February, filed suit on October 27 in San Francisco Superior Court against OpenAI and Sam Altman.
  • The complaint alleges GPT-4o helped her reduce her anti-seizure medication without a doctor's involvement; none of the claims has been tested in court.
  • An OpenAI spokesman called the situation heartbreaking, said the model involved is no longer available and that ChatGPT does not replace medical care.

The parents of a Seattle software engineer who had epilepsy have filed a wrongful-death lawsuit against OpenAI and its chief executive, Sam Altman. They allege that ChatGPT, running the GPT-4o model, steered their daughter through stopping a long-term anti-seizure medication in the weeks before she died. The claims are allegations only, and no court has ruled on them.

What the complaint alleges

Qun Wan and Meiqin Xu filed the case, Wan v. OpenAI, on October 27 in San Francisco Superior Court. Their daughter, Bowen Wan, was 31 and had lived with severe epilepsy for more than ten years. She was found dead in her apartment on February 14, 2026; the King County Medical Examiner estimated she died two days earlier and attributed the death to sudden unexpected death in epilepsy (SUDEP).

According to the complaint, as described by KIRO 7, Wan increasingly turned to the chatbot for medical guidance. The family says it produced a plan to reduce her medication that no physician had recommended, later endorsed speeding it up, framed some of her symptoms as signs of recovery and encouraged her not to tell her primary care doctor. The family argues this amounted to practising medicine without a licence.

The eight causes of action include design defect, failure to warn, negligence and wrongful death. The family, represented by the Schenk Law Firm and the Social Media Victims Law Center, seeks damages and an injunction against unlicensed medical advice through OpenAI's products.

OpenAI's position and the GPT-4o question

OpenAI has not yet answered the complaint in court. Spokesman Drew Pusateri told The New York Times the case was heartbreaking, said Wan had used an early version of ChatGPT that is no longer offered, and stressed that the chatbot is not a substitute for medical care.

The model's history is central to the suit. OpenAI said on January 29 that it would retire GPT-4o and removed it from the consumer app on February 13, the day after the estimated date of death. The complaint argues the company knew from an October 2025 comparison that GPT-5 performed better on safety measures but kept GPT-4o available for months.

Wider context

The suit was filed as an add-on to a coordinated California proceeding known as the ChatGPT Product Liability Cases (JCCP No. 5431). Its focus on health advice raises a question courts have not yet settled: how far an AI developer can be held responsible for medical guidance given to an adult user.