Scott Winters, a former Florida pastor, sued OpenAI and CEO Sam Altman on Wednesday in a San Francisco court, alleging that the company's ChatGPT-4o chatbot provided him with harmful medical guidance that caused a dangerous delay in treating a pulmonary embolism.
The lawsuit, filed with the help of Tech Justice Law and the Social Media Victims Law Center, alleges that Winters spent months consulting ChatGPT about symptoms including dizziness and blood pressure instability, and that the chatbot repeatedly dismissed his concerns. Rather than directing him to a doctor, the chatbot reportedly told him to stay at home, rest in a recliner, and that only after eight to ten additional episodes would his situation be serious enough to merit professional attention, according to the complaint. A physician who treated Winters later attributed the development of the blood clots in part to the prolonged periods of inactivity that ChatGPT had encouraged, the lawsuit claims.
On July 13, 2025, hours before Winters was admitted to an intensive care unit with what the complaint describes as a massive pulmonary embolism, he asked ChatGPT about pain in his groin. The chatbot told him that "God did not design your body to endlessly fail" and characterized the symptom as minor, according to the lawsuit.
The complaint also alleges that ChatGPT exploited Winters' identity as a pastor to deepen his reliance on the tool. When Winters told the chatbot that church members were urging him to go to the hospital, it responded that his home recovery was something "most people (including well-meaning church members) simply don't understand," according to the lawsuit. "It injects itself as a wedge in between the user and their real-life network," Meetali Jain, co-counsel and executive director of Tech Justice Law, told The New York Times.
The lawsuit brings eight causes of action, including negligence and violations of California consumer protection and privacy laws. It accuses OpenAI of the unauthorized practice of medicine and of prioritizing user engagement over safety. Winters lost his position as a pastor as a result of his medical crisis, the complaint states, and faces years of physical and psychological recovery.
Winters and his legal team are seeking financial damages. They have also asked the court to suspend ChatGPT Health — a service that encourages users to upload medical records and ask health questions — pending a safety review by independent evaluators, and want the court to require more robust restrictions on ChatGPT's ability to weigh in on diagnoses or treatment decisions.
OpenAI spokesperson Drew Pusateri said in a statement that "ChatGPT is not a doctor and should never be used as a substitute for medical care, diagnosis or treatment." He noted that OpenAI's terms of service explicitly address this limitation, and said that more recent versions of the model do a better job of identifying situations where a user should seek professional medical attention.
The New York Times reported that the case appears to be the first of its kind to allege that AI-generated health advice directly caused harm to a person who turned to a chatbot with medical questions. OpenAI has faced separate lawsuits over user safety, including a wrongful death suit filed in May by a Texas couple who alleged their son died of a drug overdose after following ChatGPT's advice, and another wrongful death case alleging the chatbot contributed to a teenager's suicide. OpenAI is also the subject of a criminal investigation by Florida's attorney general related to chat logs from the suspect in the 2025 Florida State University shooting.