A growing share of U.S. patients are uploading lab results and imaging reports directly into AI chatbots such as ChatGPT before consulting a physician, a trend fueling hallucination, misinterpretation and privacy concerns among clinicians, The Wall Street Journal reported Aug. 6.
Roughly a third of U.S. adults turn to AI chatbots for health advice, and 19% use the tools to interpret lab results or medical tests, according to a 2026 KFF poll. OpenAI says more than 300 million people ask health-related questions on ChatGPT each week, and the company expanded access in July to a feature linking medical records and wearable data to flag health trends over time. Anthropic’s Claude can connect to some users’ medical records, and Epic has built a similar AI assistant into its own software.
Jason Goldman, MD, an internist in Coral Springs, Fla., told the Journal patients have used conversations with chatbots to justify stopping lifesaving cholesterol medication. Others have questioned recommended vaccines because AI validated their hesitancy, he added.
“I’ll give them a recommendation and they’ll say, ‘Let me go ask AI,’ and I’m like, ‘Then why are you here?’” Dr. Goldman said.
Mary K. Mulcahey, MD, chief of sports medicine at Loyola University Medical Center in Maywood, Ill., said AI models often lack the clinical context to distinguish between injury types, such as meniscus tears, that require different treatment approaches.
Patients who upload health data into a chatbot also waive protections under HIPAA, said Brad Malin, a professor of biomedical informatics at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn. Companies largely set their own privacy policies and can change the terms, he said.
“In this situation, it is not a patient, it’s a consumer,” Mr. Malin said.
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