Should you really trust health advice from an AI chatbot?

Should you really trust health advice from an AI chatbot?Just nowShareSaveAdd as preferred on GoogleJames GallagherInside Health presenter, BBC Radio 4AbiAbi regularly checks in with ChatGPT for health adviceFor the past year, Abi has been using ChatGPT – one of the best known AI chatbots – to help manage her health.The appeal is clear. It can feel impossible to get hold of a GP and artificial intelligence is always ready to answer your questions. And AI has comfortably passed some medical exams. So should we trust the likes of ChatGPT, Gemini and Grok? Is using them any different to an old-fashioned internet search? Or, as some experts fear – are chatbots getting things dangerously wrong, putting lives on the line?Abi, who is from Manchester, struggles with health anxiety and finds a chatbot gives more tailored advice than an internet search, which will often take her straight to the scariest possibilities."It allows a kind of problem solving together," she says. "A little bit like chatting with your doctor."Abi has seen the good and the bad side of using AI chatbots for health advice.When she thought she had a urinary tract infection, ChatGPT looked at her symptoms and recommended she go to the pharmacist. After a consultation she was prescribed an antibiotic.Abi says the chatbot got her the care she needed "without feeling like I was taking up NHS time", and was an easy source of advice for someone who "struggles a lot with knowing when you need to visit a doctor".But then in January, Abi "slipped and fully decked it" while out hiking. She smacked her back on a rock and had "insane" pressure across her back that was spreading into her stomach. So she sought advice from the AI in her pocket. "Chat GPT told me that I'd punctured an organ and I needed to go to A&E straight away," says Abi.After sitting in an emergency department for three hours, the pain was easing and Abi realised she wa...