OpenAI has announced ChatGPT Health on Wednesday, which the company said will offer a dedicated space for users to have conversations with ChatGPT about their health.
People are already using ChatGPT to ask about medical issues. OpenAI says over 230 million people ask health and wellness questions on the platform every week. But the ChatGPT Health product separates these conversations from your other conversations. This way, your health box will not appear in standard chats with ChatGPT.
If people start conversations about their health outside of the Health section, then AI aims to nudge them to change.
In Health, AI can refer to things you’ve discussed in its typical experience. If you ask ChatGPT for help creating a marathon training plan, for example, then the AI will know you’re a runner when you talk to Health about your fitness goals.
ChatGPT Health will also be able to integrate with your personal information or medical records from wellness apps like Apple Health, Function and MyFitnessPal. OpenAI notes that it will not use health conversations to train its models.
Chief Applications Officer at OpenAI, Fidji Simo, wrote a blog post that he sees ChatGPT Health as a response to existing issues in the healthcare space, such as cost and access barriers, physician overcrowding and lack of continuity of care.
While the healthcare system has its drawbacks, using AI chatbots for medical advice creates a new set of challenges. Large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT work by predicting the most likely response to prompts, not the most correct response, since LLMs have no idea what is true or not. AI models are also prone to hallucinations.
In its own terms of service, OpenAI states that it is “not intended for use in the diagnosis or treatment of any health condition.”
The feature is expected to roll out in the coming weeks.
