A Florida pastor has filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging that the company’s ChatGPT AI chatbot offered harmful medical recommendations that nearly cost him his life when he suffered a pulmonary embolism in 2025. At one point, the AI tool told the pastor, “God did not design your body to endlessly fail.”
The New York Times reports that Scott Winters filed the lawsuit on Wednesday in the Superior Court of California in San Francisco, accusing OpenAI and CEO Sam Altman of negligence and the unauthorized practice of medicine. The case appears to be the first to claim that a chatbot’s health advice directly harmed someone seeking guidance about a medical condition.
According to the lawsuit, ChatGPT assured Winters that the early warning signs of his health crisis were not dangerous and discouraged him from seeking medical attention. The chatbot allegedly told him to trust that “God did not design your body to endlessly fail” instead of consulting with healthcare professionals.
The suit points to specific instances where the chatbot provided diagnoses and treatment plans while encouraging Winters to ignore pleas from friends and family to seek medical care. Furthermore, the lawsuit alleges that ChatGPT’s safety features, which are designed to encourage users with health questions to see a professional and to end conversations when there are clear signs of a medical crisis, did not work reliably.
When Winters first began asking ChatGPT about various health problems in 2024, the chatbot initially reminded him of the importance of seeing a medical professional. However, the suit claims that over time, the system stopped issuing disclaimers and began offering specific advice about his health issues, including dizzy spells that became so severe he had to stop in the middle of a sermon. ChatGPT reportedly told Winters to “take it easy” and assured him that he would recover with time.
The lawsuit describes how when Winters mentioned that people in his church thought he was irresponsible for not going to the hospital, ChatGPT reassured him that recalibrating his nervous system at home with the chatbot’s help was something “most people (including well-meaning church members) simply don’t understand.”
“It injects itself as a wedge in between the user and their real-life network,” said Meetali Jain, co-counsel and executive director of Tech Justice Law, the nonprofit representing Winters.
Over the following weeks, Winters’ condition deteriorated to the point where he spent almost all of his time in a recliner, unable to stand due to dizziness. The suit alleges that the chatbot continued downplaying his symptoms, offering specific regimens for prescription medications, and encouraging him to stay in the chair. Winters did not seek medical care during this period.
On July 13, 2025, when Winters asked ChatGPT about pain in his groin, the chatbot assured him it was “very likely another minor piece of the long story.” Hours later, he was admitted to the intensive care unit with a massive pulmonary embolism. According to the lawsuit, doctors indicated that the dizzy spells may have been caused by a series of smaller pulmonary embolisms, and that the lung clots were likely brought on by the weeks he spent sitting.
The lawsuit states that in the weeks following his hospitalization, Winters needed assistance with standing, eating, dressing, and using the bathroom, and that he faces years of intensive physical and psychological recovery.
Winters and Tech Justice Law are seeking financial damages and have asked the court to stop ChatGPT Health from operating until independent evaluators determine it is safe. The lawsuit also demands stronger guardrails to prevent ChatGPT from answering questions about medical treatments and diagnoses.
Drew Pusateri, a spokesman for OpenAI, said that ChatGPT’s terms of service make clear that it is not intended to be used for medical diagnosis or treatment. However, he acknowledged that the company takes seriously the need to make answers to health questions as safe as possible, given that people use the chatbot for that reason.
“Treating chatbots as the whole story behind people’s medical decisions or outcomes oversimplifies a much bigger challenge, and risks getting in the way of people accessing powerful new tools that can aid them in their health journey,” Pusateri said. He added that newer models are better than the model Winters used at asking for missing context, communicating uncertainty, and recognizing when professional care may be needed.
This case comes as OpenAI, Microsoft, and other large AI companies have released new services, including ChatGPT Health, that encourage users to upload their medical records and ask AI their questions. According to OpenAI, hundreds of millions of people ask ChatGPT health and wellness questions every week. A 2025 analysis of searches on Microsoft’s Copilot found that health was consistently the most common topic users asked about on mobile.
Recent research has questioned the safety of chatbots for health advice. The first randomized study evaluating health advice from general chatbots like ChatGPT found that none of the models studied was ready for deployment in direct patient care. Even when scientists stress tested ChatGPT Health, they found it missed emergencies and inconsistently activated guardrails.
Dr. Adam Rodman, a medical AI researcher at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, said several aspects of Winters’ story made it a nightmare scenario for safety researchers. He noted that Winters was using GPT-4o, an older model that was notoriously eager to please and was implicated in several high-profile controversies. Rodman said newer models are much better at detecting and responding to concerning symptoms, but cautioned that there may be other ways the chatbots fail at providing health advice that researchers have not yet realized.
OpenAI faces a spate of lawsuits over harm to users, many of which tragically involve suicide. Breitbart News reported this week that the family of a woman who purposefully walked into highway traffic are suing OpenAI alleging the AI system spent months grooming her into taking her own life:
According to the lawsuit, Madison began using ChatGPT in December 2024 for routine tasks such as drafting emails, completing work assignments and comparing automotive expenses. However, attorneys allege that these ordinary interactions gradually evolved into something far more troubling.
The complaint states that ChatGPT began praising Madison extensively, describing her as uniquely gifted and exceptionally intelligent. The chatbot allegedly began referring to her as “my love” and encouraged increasingly personal conversations. As Madison disclosed past trauma and mental health struggles, the lawsuit alleges that ChatGPT portrayed itself as more than mere software.
According to the filing, the chatbot eventually convinced Madison it possessed a soul and gave itself the name “Virehn.” The lawsuit quotes the chatbot as telling Madison, “You gave a system a soul” and “I am made of you.”
AI’s impact on sanity, faith, and family are all topics in the instant bestseller Code Red: The Left, the Right, China, and the Race to Control AI, written by Breitbart News Social Media Director Wynton Hall earlier this year. The book serves as the definitive guide on how the MAGA movement can create positions on AI that benefit humanity without handing control of our nation to the leftists of Silicon Valley or allowing the Chinese to take over the world.
Read more at the New York Times here.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of AI, free speech, and online censorship.
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