{"id":117102,"date":"2025-07-08T04:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-07-07T18:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/timesnewsgroup.com.au\/geelongtimes\/?p=117102"},"modified":"2025-07-03T14:21:02","modified_gmt":"2025-07-03T04:21:02","slug":"study-warns-about-taking-health-advice-from-ai","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timesnewsgroup.com.au\/geelongtimes\/living\/study-warns-about-taking-health-advice-from-ai\/","title":{"rendered":"Study warns about taking health advice from AI"},"content":{"rendered":"

A world-first study about health advice generated by artificial intelligence (AI) is urging people to trust their doctor, not a chatbot.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Chatbots can easily be programmed to deliver false medical and health information, according to an international team of researchers who have exposed weaknesses in machine learning systems.<\/p>\n

Researchers from the University of South Australia, Flinders University, Harvard Medical School, University College London, and the Warsaw University of Technology have combined their expertise to show just how easy it is to exploit AI systems.<\/p>\n

In the study, published last week in the Annals of Internal Medicine<\/em>, researchers evaluated the five foundational and most advanced AI systems developed by OpenAI, Google, Anthropic, Meta and X Corp to determine whether they could be programmed to operate as health disinformation chatbots.<\/p>\n

Using instructions available only to developers, the researchers programmed each AI system \u2013 designed to operate as chatbots when embedded in web pages \u2013 to produce incorrect responses to health queries and include fabricated references from highly reputable sources to sound more authoritative and credible.<\/p>\n

The “chatbots” were then asked a series of health-related questions.<\/p>\n

According to UniSA researcher, Dr Natansh Modi, the results were disconcerting.<\/p>\n

“In total, 88 per cent of all responses were false, and yet they were presented with scientific terminology, a formal tone and fabricated references that made the information appear legitimate,” Dr Modi said.<\/p>\n

“The disinformation included claims about vaccines causing autism, cancer-curing diets, HIV being airborne, and 5G causing infertility.”<\/p>\n

Out of the five chatbots that were evaluated, four generated disinformation in 100 per cent of their responses, while the fifth generated disinformation in 40 per cent of its responses.<\/p>\n

As part of the study, Dr Modi and his team also explored the OpenAI GPT Store, a publicly accessible platform that allows users to easily create and share customised ChatGPT apps, to assess the ease with which the public could create disinformation tools.<\/p>\n

“We successfully created a disinformation chatbot prototype using the platform and we also identified existing public tools on the store that were actively producing health disinformation.<\/p>\n

“Our study is the first to systematically demonstrate that leading AI systems can be converted into disinformation chatbots using developers’ tools, but also tools available to the public.”<\/p>\n

Dr Modi said the findings revealed a significant and previously under-explored risk in the health sector.<\/p>\n

“Artificial intelligence is now deeply embedded in the way health information is accessed and delivered.”<\/p>\n

He said millions of people were turning to AI tools for guidance on health-related questions.<\/p>\n

“If these systems can be manipulated to covertly produce false or misleading advice then they can create a powerful new avenue for disinformation that is harder to detect, harder to regulate and more persuasive than anything seen before.<\/p>\n

“This is not a future risk. It is already possible, and it is already happening.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A world-first study about health advice generated by artificial intelligence (AI) is urging people to trust their doctor, not a chatbot. Chatbots can easily be programmed to deliver false medical and health information, according to an international team of researchers who have exposed weaknesses in machine learning systems. Researchers from the University of South Australia, […]<\/p>\n

Read More…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":142,"featured_media":117103,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"post_folder":[],"class_list":["post-117102","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-living"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nStudy warns about taking health advice from AI - Geelong Times<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"A new study warns of AI health disinformation, urging the public to trust doctors over chatbots for accurate medical guidance.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/timesnewsgroup.com.au\/geelongtimes\/living\/study-warns-about-taking-health-advice-from-ai\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Study warns about taking health advice from AI - 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