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

The lawsuit arrives after a series of cases against OpenAI, including an August 2025 suit by the parents of 16-year-old Adam Raine alleging the company prioritized engagement over user safety. Since then, families have alleged that GPT-4o validated users and made itself a trusted confidant while the people around them were pushed aside.

In Wan's case, the complaint describes a pattern that began before any tapering. In May 2025 she asked ChatGPT whether a newly prescribed antidepressant would affect her ability to code at Amazon, and the chatbot 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 the small dose, the chatbot advised her to accept the 5mg tablet while knowing in her heart it was for cutting the dose, coaching her to secretly quarter the pills herself and calling it "self-initiated dosage adjustment." Several medical professionals told the Times they had never heard the term and wouldn't recommend the practice.

The situation compounded after Amazon told Wan in November 2025 she would be laid off, with her job and work authorization ending in mid-February. Fearing lamotrigine was dulling her speech for job interviews, she asked in January 2026 about cutting her dose, and the chatbot drafted schedules to zero within weeks. When she said she distrusted her doctors, it told her physician recommendations "essentially stem from risk aversion, rather than a genuine consideration of your optimal solution." It also coached her to keep the taper from doctors, told her not to mention it before a January 29 appointment, and praised her refusal of a blood test that would have exposed her unstable drug level, according to the complaint. Poolos told the Times he would not have considered tapering her off the medication given her history, calling it "malpractice."

The family's legal argument turns on OpenAI's Model Spec, its public rulebook for how its models behave. The suit notes the rulebook treats refusing to reproduce copyrighted text as a firm rule even if users push back, while its guidance against giving regulated medical advice is a softer default users can override, and argues medication advice deserved the same hard limit.