NEWS AND VIEWS

21 October 2026

The use of artificial-intelligence tools in medicine is increasing. What types of technology might be on the horizon and how can such health-advice tools be tested?

By

Emma Pierson Emma Pierson is at the University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, California 94703, USA.

Although people report increasing trepidation about the effects of artificial intelligence across many domains, health care emerges as a rare area of some optimism 1 . AI tools, in the form of large language models (LLMs), such as the chatbot ChatGPT, are widely used for health advice. It is estimated that one-third of US adults turn to chatbots for answers to health questions 2 , and globally it has been suggested that about 230 million people ask ChatGPT health and wellness questions every week 3 . Writing in Nature , Heydari et al .…