OpenAI has launched ChatGPT Health. Should we trust it?

Amid rising concerns about people relying on ChatGPT for medical advice, OpenAI made its most significant push yet into health care.

The company has launched a new feature called ChatGPT Health, which allows users in the U.S. to connect their medical records and data from wellness apps and wearable devices with ChatGPT. The tool is designed to help users understand test results, get advice on diets and workouts, and prepare for doctors’ appointments.

More than 230 million people globally ask ChatGPT health and wellness-related questions every week, according to the company. ChatGPT Health is designed in collaboration with physicians and will “help people take a more active role in understanding and managing their health and wellness,” the company said in a post.

OpenAI said it will look to expand access to the feature in markets such as India, Brazil, Mexico, and the Philippines, where adoption is rising quickly. In these countries, overburdened health-care systems and unequal access to doctors are leading more people to turn to generative AI for guidance.

“We do not have the people, the labor to deliver the care we should,” Jesse Ehrenfeld, chief medical officer at Aidoc, an Israeli medical technology company, said at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. “The only way out of this mess is digital and AI.”

Researchers, ethicists, and medical professionals have warned of the risks to users from biases and hallucinations in AI systems. Concern over the mental health harms that AI chatbots pose is growing. Meta’s AI chatbots provided inappropriate advice to teenagers when talking about suicide and eating disorders, Common Sense Media, a nonprofit research organization, reported last year.

The family of a teenager who died by suicide has sued OpenAI and its chief executive officer Sam Altman, accusing them of wrongful death. The company said it has safeguards in place to help people, and that it continues to improve ChatGPT’s training.

There is also the question of data privacy. Health data, particularly information related to mental disease and substance use, is sensitive, and its misuse can leave users vulnerable.

While consumer awareness about privacy has increased, people generally do not know how their data is being used, including for marketing purposes or for tracking, Sam Siegfried, a partner at law firm McDermott Will & Schulte, told Rest of World on the sidelines of CES.

“The person clearly trusts an app enough to give it their data,” he said. “But they should understand what they are using the app for, and whether its data requests sync up with what they are using it for.”

OpenAI said ChatGPT Health “builds on the strong privacy, security, and data controls across ChatGPT with additional, layered protections designed specifically for health — including purpose-built encryption and isolation to keep health conversations protected and compartmentalized.”

There is no stopping tech companies from entering the health sector.

Besides turning to AI chatbots for health queries, people are also buying more wearable digital devices, including smartwatches, rings, bracelets, and glasses, to track physical activity, vital signs, and various physiological responses in real-time. They take this data to their doctors — or to ChatGPT — with questions on how to interpret it or use it to improve their health.

“Health-related anxiety is real. AI is not as good as a doctor, but it’s better than no care at all,” Ami Bhatt, chief innovation officer at the American College of Cardiology, said at CES.

OpenAI isn’t the only big tech company keen to tap the health-care sector.

Apple was among the first to offer health-tracking features in its smartwatch. There are millions of health-related videos on YouTube and TikTok, with nearly 60% of Americans watching health-related videos on YouTube.

Health is “one of the major use cases for Gemini,” Nichole Young-Lin, women’s health clinical lead at Google, said at CES.

“People are using generative AI as a health resource around the world,” she said. “The patient-physician relationship is very important, but health-care access is not equal. Patients feel empowered with generative AI.”