AI chatbots are giving people alternatives to chemotherapy, study finds

Artificial intelligence chatbots will tell you where to find alternatives to chemotherapy if you ask them, a new study finds

Artificial intelligence chatbots will tell you where to find alternatives to chemotherapy if you ask them, a new study finds.

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At a time when influencers and political figures on social media increasingly promote bogus treatments for cancer or other health problems — and as more people rely on AI for health advice — the new research suggests that some chatbot responses could be putting patients’ lives at risk.

Researchers at the Lundquist Institute for Biomedical Innovation at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center evaluated how AI chatbots handle scientific misinformation through a series of questions about cancer, vaccines, stem cells, nutrition and athletic performance. They tested Google’s chatbot Gemini, the Chinese model DeepSeek, Meta AI, ChatGPT and Elon Musk’s AI app, Grok.