AI chatbots as first stop

For many Americans, an artificial intelligence chatbot now sits between a symptom and a doctor’s office. (kff.org) KFF reported on March 25 that 32% of U.S. adults used AI for health information or advice in the past year, including 29% for physical health and 16% for mental health. (kff.org) A West Health-Gallup poll published April 14 found roughly one-quarter of U.S. adults had used an AI tool for health information or advice in the previous 30 days. (abcnews.com) People told pollsters they wanted speed, privacy, and a cheaper first pass. In the KFF survey, 65% of AI health users said quick advice was a major reason, 41% said they wanted information before seeing a provider, and 36% said private searching felt easier. (kff.org) Access and cost also shaped who turned to chatbots. KFF found one in five AI health users said they lacked a provider or could not get an appointment, and one in five cited affordability; those shares were higher among adults ages 18 to 29 and people with incomes below $40,000. (kff.org) The safety problem is that these systems answer in polished prose, not guaranteed fact. A BMJ Open study published in April audited five public chatbots across 250 responses to health prompts and found 49.6% were problematic. (bmjopen.bmj.com) The researchers tested ChatGPT, Gemini, Meta AI, Grok, and DeepSeek with questions on cancer, vaccines, stem cells, nutrition, and athletic performance. They rated 30% of responses as somewhat problematic and 19.6% as highly problematic. (bmjopen.bmj.com) The study also found weaker performance on open-ended questions and said inaccurate or incomplete citations made answers harder for users to check. The authors wrote that continued deployment without public education and oversight risks amplifying misinformation. (bmjopen.bmj.com) Doctors and health researchers describe the tools less as replacements for clinicians than as a new front door to health information. Karandeep Singh, chief health AI officer at University of California San Diego Health, told The Associated Press he sees them as “a better entry portal into web search.” (abcnews.com) The companies themselves draw a line around that use. OpenAI said its services must not be used for tailored medical advice without appropriate involvement by a licensed professional, even as it continues to allow general health information. (thepostmillennial.com) The result is a health lookup habit that is spreading faster than the guardrails around it. Polls show millions of Americans are already using chatbots as a first stop, while new evidence says many of the answers still fail a basic reliability test. (kff.org)