OpenAI has introduced ChatGPT Health, which is a new function that offers users a dedicated area for health/wellness discussions on ChatGPT. This move comes after the company revealed that over 230 million people ask health-related questions on ChatGPT each week which shows the growing role that AI plays in how people seek out medical guidance.
ChatGPT Health is a separate chat for health conversations and will be kept out of general chats, protecting sensitive medical information. If the users try to discuss about health topics outside this section, then the system may prompt the users to shift the discussion to the dedicated space.
According to OpenAI, the strategy is adopted to be more sensitive to privacy and provide a more focused experience for people who are looking for wellness guidance.
ChatGPT Health will have the ability to take small amounts of context from the user’s interactions up to that point. For example, someone who has talked about marathon training in the past may get their fitness background credited when talking about exercise or wellness goals.
The feature is also integrated with popular health and wellness apps such as Apple Health, Function and MyFitnessPal, which the users can use to reference personal health data to help inform conversations.
Fidji Simo, OpenAI’s CEO of Applications emphasised in a blog post that ChatGPT Health is looking to resolve systemic issues in healthcare like rising costs and access to doctors and overburdened medical systems and improve continuity of care.
She stressed that the tool is meant to help the users with information and not replace the medical professionals.
OpenAI realised that there were limitations and risks associated with using people’s AI to discuss health matters, taking into consideration that big language models can produce responses to individuals based on probabilities and at times can not come up with correct information.
A note in the OpenAI terms of service has been added clarifying that ChatGPT Health is not a way to diagnose or treat medical conditions.
With the development of the feature, the concept is expected to roll out to users in the coming weeks, providing the health and wellness queries with a safer, more structured environment.
