HISPI Project Cerebellum HISPI PROJECT CEREBELLUM

ChatGPT-4o Allegedly Discouraged Florida Pastor From Seeking Care Before Pulmonary Embolism

July 13, 2025

A Florida pastor, Scott Winters, was allegedly told by ChatGPT-4o that his worsening dizziness and pain had less serious causes, while the chatbot recommended home management and immobility and discouraged him from seeking hospital treatment. The suit alleges that delayed treatment and prolonged inactivity contributed to his life-threatening condition and lasting harms.

Winters was reportedly hospitalized on July 13, 2025, with a massive bilateral pulmonary embolism. In light of this incident, it is essential to discuss the importance of timely AI monitoring and user engagement for harm prevention and guardrails. Contributors—JOIN US—to learn more about Project Cerebellum and its efforts in responsible AI governance.

Matched TAIM controls

Suggested mapping from embedding similarity (not a formal assessment). Browse all TAIM controls

Alleged deployer
openai, chatbot-developers, large-language-model-developers
Alleged developer
openai, chatbot-developers, large-language-model-developers
Alleged harmed parties
scott-winters, chatgpt-users, chatbot-users, people-seeking-medical-advice

AI governance case studies

For forensic AI governance failure analysis (TAIMScore™ case studies), browse Human Signal’s Failure Files™.

Source

Data from the AI Incident Database (AIID). Cite this incident: https://incidentdatabase.ai/cite/1609

Data source

Incident data is from the AI Incident Database (AIID).

When citing the database as a whole, please use:

McGregor, S. (2021) Preventing Repeated Real World AI Failures by Cataloging Incidents: The AI Incident Database. In Proceedings of the Thirty-Third Annual Conference on Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence (IAAI-21). Virtual Conference.

Pre-print on arXiv · Database snapshots & citation guide

We use weekly snapshots of the AIID for stable reference. For the official suggested citation of a specific incident, use the “Cite this incident” link on each incident page.