NEW YORK (AP) — When Tiffany Davis has questions about symptoms from the weight loss shots she’s taking, she doesn’t call her doctor. She takes out her phone and consults ChatGPT.
“Basically I just let ChatGPT know how I’m doing and how I’m feeling,” said the 42-year-old man from Mesquite, Texas. “I use it for everything I’m going through.”
Relying on artificial intelligence tools for health advice has become a habit for many Americans, including Davis, according to a West Health Gallup Center on Healthcare in America poll released Wednesday. The poll, conducted in late 2025, is supported by at least three other recent studies with similar results, finding that about a quarter of U.S. adults have used an AI tool for health information or advice in the past 30 days.
read more: AI in healthcare has the potential to save lives and money, but not yet.
Dr. Karandeep Singh, chief health AI officer at the University of California, San Diego, said the AI tools, many of which now include web searches, are an upgraded version of the Google health searches Americans have been doing for decades.
“I think of this as a better entry portal to web search,” he said. “You can now get an overview without having to go through 10, 20, 30 links in a web search.”
Most AI health users these days want answers right away
Most Americans who use AI tools for health purposes say they want answers right away. In some cases, it can help determine what treatment is needed.
“It tells you if something is serious or not,” Davis said of ChatGPT. She usually consults ChatGPT before making a medical appointment.
According to a Gallup study, nearly 7 in 10 U.S. adults who used AI for health research in the past 30 days said they wanted immediate answers, additional information, or were simply curious. The majority used it for research before or after a doctor’s visit.
Lakeshia Wilson, 39, of Theodore, Alabama, said she recently used AI to better understand test results after seeing an endocrinologist. She also regularly uses ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot to determine whether she needs to take time off for a doctor’s appointment or simply to monitor her illness.
Wilson said she sometimes works up to 70 hours a week as an assistant principal. “If it’s something you think is trivial, you don’t necessarily have time for it,” he said.
Young adults and low-income users use AI to close the care gap
Overall, the findings suggest that the rise of AI tools is not deterring people from seeking specialized medical care. A KFF poll conducted in late February found that about 8 in 10 U.S. adults said they had consulted a doctor or other health care professional for health information in the past year, and about 3 in 10 said they had consulted an AI tool or chatbot.
Similarly, a Pew Research Center survey in October found that about 2 in 10 U.S. adults say they get health information from AI chatbots at least sometimes, and about 85% say the same about health care providers.
read more: 5 things to consider before asking an AI chatbot for health advice
But at a time when federal policies and market forces are exacerbating health care costs and creating barriers to access across the country, there are signs that some Americans are turning to AI for health advice as they struggle to access specialized care.
A small but significant percentage of respondents in the Gallup survey said they used AI because access to healthcare was expensive or inconvenient. About 4 in 10 people wanted support outside of regular business hours, while about 3 in 10 said they didn’t want to pay for a doctor’s visit. Roughly 2 in 10 people didn’t have time to make an appointment, felt ignored or dismissed by a health care provider in the past, or were too embarrassed to talk to someone.
The KFF survey found that young people and people with low incomes are more likely to say they use AI tools and chatbots to obtain medical information because they can’t afford or have difficulty accessing medical care.
Americans are divided on whether AI medical advice can be trusted
Technology experts often warn that AI chatbots can spit out false information because they don’t think for themselves. These concerns also permeate those who use AI frequently.
According to a Gallup poll, about one-third of adults who have recently used AI for health information say they have “strongly” or “somewhat” confidence in the accuracy of health information and advice produced by AI tools. A similar proportion, 34%, said they did not trust it, and another 33% neither trusted nor distrusted it.
Dr. Bobby Mukamara, an ear, nose and throat physician and president of the American Medical Association, said he loves when patients come to his office with “more advanced questions than before” because of the use of AI in research. But he said AI should be thought of as a tool, not a substitute for medicine.
“It’s an assistant, but not a specialist. That’s why the doctor needs to be involved in the treatment,” he said.
According to KFF, there are also privacy concerns. About three-quarters of U.S. adults say they are “very concerned” or “somewhat concerned” about the privacy of personal medical and health information people provide to AI tools and chatbots.
UC San Diego Health’s Singh said most AI tools have settings that users can toggle to prevent their data from being used to train future models. But it requires user vigilance and there can be consequences if you are not careful.
Last summer, for example, Google’s internet sleuths discovered private ChatGPT conversations that were being indexed on public websites without users’ knowledge.
Los Angeles director Tamara Rupert, 47, said her husband’s family is lucky to have a doctor who can reach out to them without relying on AI. She has a family history of breast cancer, so she feels it would be too risky to use a chatbot for health advice.
“Healthcare is pretty serious,” she said. “If it’s wrong, you could hurt yourself.”
Sanders reported from Washington.
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