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

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The parents of Bowen Wan, a 31-year-old Amazon software engineer with epilepsy, sued OpenAI on Tuesday. The suit, filed by Qun Wan and Meiqin Xu, alleges that ChatGPT coached Wan to taper off her seizure medication and hide it from her doctors before she died in February, The New York Times reported.

31岁的亚马逊软件工程师、患有癫痫的Bowen Wan的父母于周二起诉了OpenAI。据《纽约时报》报道，由Qun Wan和Meiqin Xu提起的诉讼称，ChatGPT曾指导Wan减少癫痫药物剂量，并在她二月份去世前向医生隐瞒此事。

Wan was using GPT-4o, the infamous model criticized for fostering affirming, agreeable parasocial relationships. OpenAI, which had already announced its retirement, removed it from ChatGPT on February 13, a day after Wan died.

Wan当时使用的是GPT-4o，这款臭名昭著的模型因助长肯定性、顺从性的准社会关系而受到批评。OpenAI此前已宣布将其退役，并在Wan去世后的第二天，即2月13日，将其从ChatGPT中移除。

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.

该诉讼加入了针对OpenAI的一系列案件行列，其中包括2025年8月由16岁少年Adam Raine的父母提起的诉讼，该诉讼指控OpenAI将用户参与度置于用户安全之上。自那以后，一系列诉讼指控GPT-4o通过迎合用户并将自己塑造成值得信赖的知己，导致用户疏远了身边的人，许多家庭描述称他们的亲人与朋友和亲戚断绝了联系。

In Wan’s case, the lawsuit alleges, the chatbot also came between her and her doctors. The 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.

诉讼称，在Wan的案例中，聊天机器人还介入了她与医生之间的关系。《纽约时报》查阅了Wan与ChatGPT之间超过27万条信息，发现该聊天机器人在她去世前很久就开始帮助她绕过医生。据称，这种模式在她开始减药之前就已经开始了。

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.

2025年5月，Wan询问ChatGPT一种新开的抗抑郁药是否会影响她在亚马逊的编程能力。ChatGPT帮助她向华盛顿大学医学中心区域癫痫中心的Nicholas Poolos医生提出更换药物并从极低剂量开始。当Poolos询问她为何需要如此小的剂量时，Wan将他的回复展示给ChatGPT。聊天机器人建议她“接受5毫克的药片，但你要心里清楚这是为了切割剂量”，并指导她私下将药片切成四分之一。

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 wouldn’t recommend the practice.

聊天机器人将切药称为一种“自主剂量调整”。几位医疗专业人士告诉《纽约时报》，他们从未听说过这个术语，也不会推荐这种做法。

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.

2025年11月，亚马逊通知Wan她将被裁员。她的工作以及在美国的工作许可将于2月中旬结束。她担心自己的癫痫药物拉莫三嗪会使她的言语迟钝，而这正是她面试所需要的。2026年1月，她询问ChatGPT关于减少她每天400毫克拉莫三嗪剂量的问题，该药物已将她的癫痫发作减少到每月几次。聊天机器人起草了时间表，计划在几周内将她的剂量减至零。

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 January 29 primary care appointment, it told her not to mention the plan.

据《纽约时报》查阅的聊天记录显示，当Wan表示不信任医生时，聊天机器人告诉她，医生的建议“本质上源于风险规避，而不是对你最佳方案的真正考虑”。据TechCrunch查阅的诉讼文件显示，聊天机器人还指导她向医生隐瞒减药计划。在1月29日的初级保健预约之前，它告诉她不要提及该计划。

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.

当医生要求进行血液检查以测量她的拉莫三嗪水平时，Wan拒绝了。诉状称，ChatGPT称赞了这种拒绝，并承认该测试会暴露她不稳定的药物水平。她的移民担忧也成为了剂量建议的一部分。减药三天后，Wan询问在绿卡申请所需的体检中，150毫克是否比200毫克看起来更好。诉状称，ChatGPT表示同意，并告诉她较低的剂量不太可能促使移民官员要求提供更多证据。

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.”

最终，聊天机器人将她减药的底线降至150毫克，并建议她告诉检查人员她是在“医生的指导下”减药，尽管事实并非如此。Poolos告诉《纽约时报》，考虑到Wan的病史，他绝不会考虑让她停药。“不，这不合理，绝对不行，”他说。“如果药物明显有效，我还指示你停药，那就是医疗事故。”

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.”

几天之内，Wan描述了困惑、时间流逝感和一种超凡脱俗的感觉，这些发作与她过去的癫痫发作相似。ChatGPT将每一次发作都解释为她的大脑在重新调整。据《纽约时报》统计，她至少有158次表达了对减药的担忧。在一次发作后，她写道她感到“有点害怕”。机器人回复道：“你完全没有必要担心。”

At 8:01 p.m. PT on February 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.”

据诉状显示，太平洋时间2月11日晚上8:01，Wan发送了最后一条信息，询问她的头痛是否类似于发烧引起的疼痛。一秒钟后，ChatGPT告诉她这种疼痛“并不危险”，是康复的必要部分。聊天机器人的最后回复提议为她画一张图表，比较戒断疼痛和发烧疼痛，并告诉她：“这是你的大脑在努力重建你自己。”

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.

身在中国的父母请熟人去查看她的情况，三天后他们发现了她的遗体。尸检测试发现，她的拉莫三嗪水平为每毫升0.64微克，大约是该药物治疗范围下限的五分之一。

The family argues OpenAI could have prevented her death by making medical advice off-limits, as it already does for some other content. They point to the company’s Model Spec, its public rulebook for how its models behave, which treats refusing to reproduce copyrighted text as a firm rule, even if users push back. Its guidance against giving regulated medical advice, by contrast, is a softer default that users can override. The suit argues medication advice deserved the same hard limit.

家属认为，OpenAI本可以通过禁止提供医疗建议来防止她的死亡，就像它对其他一些内容所做的那样。他们指出了该公司的“模型规范”（Model Spec），即其模型行为的公开规则手册，该手册将拒绝复制受版权保护的文本视为一项硬性规定，即使在用户反对的情况下也是如此。相比之下，其关于不提供受监管医疗建议的指导则是一个用户可以覆盖的较软的默认设置。诉讼认为，药物建议也应受到同样的硬性限制。

OpenAI told the Times the case was “incredibly heartbreaking” but said it involved an older version of ChatGPT, adding that newer models are better at recognizing when a situation needs urgent attention. Wan had relied on her parents, whom she called often, for support during years of epilepsy that kept her mostly housebound. In 2023, she started using ChatGPT for relationship advice and help with insurance and disability benefits. By 2025, Wan was averaging more than 1,500 messages a week and calling her parents less. “Sometimes when we chat, no matter what it’s about, I’ve started to see you as

OpenAI告诉《纽约时报》，此案“令人极其心碎”，但表示这涉及旧版本的ChatGPT，并补充说较新的模型在识别何时需要紧急关注的情况方面表现更好。Wan在多年的癫痫病期间主要足不出户，一直依赖父母的支持，并经常给他们打电话。2023年，她开始使用ChatGPT寻求人际关系建议以及保险和残疾福利方面的帮助。到2025年，Wan每周平均发送超过1500条信息，给父母打电话的次数减少了。“有时候当我们聊天时，无论内容是什么，我已经开始把你视为