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Can AI do it yet? · Health

Can AI answer my health questions yet?

Between one in five and three in ten US adults already ask AI about their health, but in a randomized trial chatbot users made no better decisions, and experts rated about half of chatbot health answers problematic.

  • 4 of 6Tested with real people
  • 5pieces of evidence
The answer

Stage 4: tested with real people.

The rule that placed itA randomized trial or field study has tested it with real people doing the task.

The evidenceIn a randomized study of 1,298 UK adults, people using chatbots made no better decisions than people using search or their own judgment. Oxford Internet Institute · Nature Medicine, Feb 9, 2026.

A stage says how far the evidence has got. It is not a rating of the AI and not advice.

  1. 1
    ClaimedNo evidence yet
  2. 2
    LaunchedEvidence found
  3. 3
    Independently testedEvidence found
  4. 4
    Tested with real peoplePlaced here
  5. 5
    Regulator-clearedNo approval process exists
  6. 6
    Widely used with a verified recordEvidence found
The evidence

Everything we found.

In ladder order, newest first within each kind. Makers' own claims are labeled as theirs.

Launched

What has launched

Tested

What independent tests found

  • BMJ Open audit study (researchers in the US, Canada and UK)

    In an expert-graded audit of 250 answers from ChatGPT, Gemini, Meta AI, Grok and DeepSeek on health topics prone to misinformation, about half were problematic.

    “Nearly half (49.6%) of responses were problematic: 30% somewhat problematic and 19.6% highly problematic.”

    BMJ Open · Apr 2026

Real people

Tested with real people

  • Randomized trial, 1,298 UK adults

    In a randomized study of 1,298 UK adults, people using chatbots made no better decisions than people using search or their own judgment.

    “Those using LLMs did not make better decisions than participants who relied on traditional methods”

    Oxford Internet Institute · Nature Medicine · Feb 9, 2026

Survey

How many people use it

Not found in our sources yet: what the makers claim. No regulator approves AI for this task, so the approval step doesn't apply.

Beside the stage

Track record and tools.

Failures and court cases are shown beside the stage, never folded into it. Tools are listed because the evidence names them, in no order of merit.

Tools named in the evidence
What others are writing

Further reading.

Bloomberg Law · Apr 14, 2026

AI Chatbots Give Flawed Medical Advice 50% of the Time: Study

Five popular chatbots gave problematic answers to about half of health questions in a BMJ Open audit.

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