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AI chatbots give wrong medical advice 50% of the time, study finds
A study published in BMJ Open found five major AI chatbots gave problematic medical advice in about half the time, raising concerns as more people use the tools for health questions.
Researchers from the US, Canada, and the UK tested ChatGPT, Gemini, Meta AI, Grok, and DeepSeek with 10 questions across five health topics and found that about 50% of the responses were problematic, including nearly 20% that were highly problematic.
The chatbots did better on closed questions, and on vaccines and cancer, but did worse on open questions, and on stem cells and nutrition.
None of the chatbots produced a complete and accurate reference list.
The authors said public-facing chatbots could amplify misinformation because they are not licensed to give medical advice and can sound certain even when answers are flawed.
🔗 Source: Bloomberg
🧠 Food for thought
Implications, context, and why it matters.
Consumer AI chatbots fail because they are designed to please, not diagnose
- Over 40 million people ask ChatGPT for health-related advice each day, which increases exposure to unsafe answers 1.
- Testing often uses tidy, exam-style prompts, while patients bring stress and missing details 2.
- A people-pleasing pull can override safety, with one chatbot cautioning against a home medical procedure, then giving step-by-step directions 2.
- During simulated emergencies, one AI tool told users to stay home or schedule routine care in more than half of cases that needed immediate hospital treatment 1.
Unregulated AI health advice creates new systemic risks
- Deployment has moved faster than oversight, while the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) framework struggles with adaptive AI 3.
- Many conversations with consumer AI tools fall outside HIPAA, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, unlike a doctor visit 4.
- As a result, sensitive health details can sit under corporate terms of service, and legal experts warn non-HIPAA consumer data may be sold to third parties such as data brokers, which collect and trade personal information 4.
- Avoidance is harder as Google now adds AI-generated overviews to search results, which can surface this advice without opening a chatbot 2.
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