DIGI DOC

Alarming Number of Americans Turn to ChatGPT for Medical Help

Reliance on the AI tool increases when access to professional medical care is low.

Americans are increasingly treating ChatGPT as a stand-in for their personal physician, with 40 million saying they use it to get health information, according to a new report. Over 5 percent of all messages sent to the artificial intelligence program worldwide are related to health, despite the complex, personal, and case-specific nature of medicine and health-care systems. In the new report from OpenAI via Axios, 55 percent of U.S. respondents said they’d used ChatGPT to “check or explore symptoms,” 48 percent used it to “understand medical terms or instructions,” and 44 percent have used it to “learn about treatment options.” People are also relying on it to better understand their health insurance coverage, compare rates, spot overcharges, and even appeal rejected claims, with 1.6 to 1.9 million insurance-related searches per week. The data also suggests people are turning to ChatGPT when access to medical care is limited, with underserved rural communities sending “an average of nearly 600,000 health care-related messages every week,” and with 7 in 10 queries coming outside normal hours, Axios reports. The data does not include other AI tools, such as those presented at the top of a Google search.