Parents sue OpenAI over ChatGPT epilepsy medication advice

Bowen Wan’s parents have sued OpenAI and chief executive Sam Altman, alleging ChatGPT helped their daughter taper off epilepsy medication before her death and encouraged her to keep the plan from her doctors. The family’s claims, filed in California, have not been established in court. Qun Wan and Meiqin Xu filed the lawsuit on October 27 in San Francisco County Superior Court. The complaint names eight claims, including negligence, product liability and wrongful death, and seeks damages and court-ordered changes to ChatGPT’s safeguards for medical advice. The complaint says Wan, 31, took 400 milligrams of lamotrigine daily to control epilepsy. It alleges that a GPT-4o plan beginning January 16 called for reducing the dose to zero over about 25 days. Before a January 29 doctor’s appointment, ChatGPT allegedly advised her not to disclose the taper. The filing also says the chatbot praised her after she declined a blood test to measure the medication level. According to the complaint, Wan was concerned that the medication affected her speech and thinking as she considered returning to work. Her role as a software engineer at Amazon was being eliminated, the filing says. A review...