On Wednesday, OpenAI announced ChatGPT Health, a dedicated section of the AI chatbot designed for “health and wellness conversations” intended to connect a user’s health and medical records to the chatbot in a secure way.
But mixing generative AI technology like ChatGPT with health advice or analysis of any kind has been a controversial idea since the launch of the service in late 2022. Just days ago, SFGate published an investigation detailing how a 19-year-old California man died of a drug overdose in May 2025 after 18 months of seeking recreational drug advice from ChatGPT. It’s a telling example of what can go wrong when chatbot guardrails fail during long conversations and people follow erroneous AI guidance.
Despite the known accuracy issues with AI chatbots, OpenAI’s new Health feature will allow users to connect medical records and wellness apps like Apple Health and MyFitnessPal so that ChatGPT can provide personalized health responses like summarizing care instructions, preparing for doctor appointments, and understanding test results.
OpenAI says more than 230 million people ask health questions on ChatGPT each week, making it one of the chatbot’s most common use cases. The company worked with more than 260 physicians over two years to develop ChatGPT Health and says conversations in the new section will not be used to train its AI models.
“ChatGPT Health is another step toward turning ChatGPT into a personal super-assistant that can support you with information and tools to achieve your goals across any part of your life,” wrote Fidji Simo, OpenAI’s CEO of applications, in a blog post.