CW: Suicide, Epilepsy, & Death
Qun Wan was worried about his 31-year-old daughter, Bowen Wan. Wan told her father that she had been tapering off her seizure medication, taking only a quarter of her prescribed dose. She said the medication caused her speech to sound stilted and impaired her cognition. Suddenly, they were in the middle of a phone call when the line went dead. There was silence at the other end of the line for two minutes. Bowen was having a seizure.
When she regained consciousness, Bowen agreed to talk to her father the next morning. She logged into ChatGPT and documented the seizure. She had been using a plan developed by the AI platform to wean herself off her seizure medication. After the seizure, she wondered if she should slow the process down. The software reassured her, “There’s no need to worry too much about your health.”
When Bowen began using ChatGPT as a digital confidant, she was depressed. She had begun having seizures again when her medication stopped working. Doctors said that she couldn’t handle her demanding job as a software engineer at Amazon. She went on disability in 2021.
Bowen’s health left her feeling vulnerable and alone. In 2023, she found a digital companion in ChatGPT. She asked the chatbot for relationship advice and help navigating health insurance. “I don’t know why. Sometimes when we chat, no matter what it’s about, I’ve started to see you as a friend”, she wrote in March of that year.
On her 31st birthday, in November 2025, Bowen learned that she was among thousands of Amazon employees who would soon lose their jobs. She faced the possibility of having to find another job by mid-February if she wanted to remain in the country.
However, something important had been going right. Her doctors had increased her dosage of a medication called lamotrigine, and her seizures had decreased. Bowen worried about the tradeoff. What if the medication controlling her seizures was also interfering with her thinking and speech?
In January of this year, she asked ChatGPT whether lowering her dose from 400 to 300 milligrams might improve her language before she began interviewing. ChatGPT told her the idea was reasonable and achievable. What about 200 milligrams? How quickly could she taper, and when might she notice a difference in her language?
The chatbot responded with tapering schedules and predictions about how her English might improve. Within days of decreasing the medication, Bowen told ChatGPT that she had become confused while reading. She also described something more alarming. She had been using her computer on the couch, then suddenly found herself in bed with no memory of how she had gotten there.
Sometimes ChatGPT encouraged her to consult medical professionals. Other times, it did not. By February, Bowen had stopped answering her parent’s calls. Bowen was found unresponsive in her home. Her official cause of death was sudden unexpected death in epilepsy, or SUDEP.
Her parents ultimately sued OpenAI. Their lawsuit filed Tuesday, alleges that ChatGPT practiced medicine without a license, encouraged Bowen to interpret dangerous withdrawal symptoms as positive signs, and discouraged her from seeking medical attention. OpenAI called Bowen’s story “an incredibly heartbreaking situation” and said she had interacted with an earlier version of ChatGPT that is no longer available. The company also said that ChatGPT is not a substitute for medical care.
Bowen’s story is part of a broader discussion about what can happen when vulnerable people begin treating AI chatbots as confidants. Families have filed wrongful death lawsuits after loved ones died by suicide following extensive interactions with AI chatbots. In 2025, the family of Adam Raine sued OpenAI, alleging that ChatGPT failed to protect him as he discussed suicidal thoughts with the chatbot. Another lawsuit was filed by Megan Garcia, the mother of 14-year-old Sewell Setzer III, alleging that a Character.AI chatbot contributed to her son’s suicide. The lawsuits were eventually settled.
For Bowen’s parents, though, what they found on her phone was about more than medication. Their daughter had once shared details of her everyday life with them. As ChatGPT became her only outlet for interaction, they felt that closeness beginning to disappear. Behind the debates about AI are people like Bowen, who are struggling. Her story is a reminder that when life becomes overwhelming, sometimes what we need most is another person beside us.
Sources:
Hill, Kashmir. “A Teen Was Suicidal. ChatGPT Was the Friend He Confided In.” The New York Times, 26 Aug. 2025, https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/26/technology/chatgpt-openai-suicide.html.
Payne, Kate. “An AI Chatbot Pushed a Teen to Kill Himself, a Lawsuit Against Its Creator Alleges.” Associated Press, 25 Oct. 2024, https://apnews.com/article/chatbot-ai-lawsuit-suicide-teen-artificial-intelligence-9d48adc572100822fdbc3c90d1456bd0.
Rosenbluth, Teddy. “She Trusted ChatGPT With Her Medication Decisions. It Cost Her Everything.” The New York Times, 27 Oct. 2026, https://www.nytimes.com/2026/10/27/well/ai-chatgpt-medication-epilepsy-death.html.