More people are using AI for medical advice. Here’s what to know
More people are using AI for medical advice. Here’s what to know
Publish Date: 2026-06-12 15:19:00
Source Domain: bridgemi.com
by Nate Miller, Bridge Michigan
June 12, 2026
- While AI can help patients communicate with doctors, it can impede patient confidence in diagnoses
- AI often oversimplifies medical solutions
- Still, services like ChatGPT can make doctor visits more efficient
Type health symptoms into your phone or laptop, and one of numerous artificial intelligence models will spit out potential diagnoses and treatments in seconds.
But Dr. ChatGPT isn’t ready to replace your family physician just yet.
Nearly 1 out of every 3 adults reported asking artificial intelligence for health advice, according to an April poll. And while some doctors who spoke to Bridge Michigan acknowledge their office visits are more efficient when patients learn about their conditions online, there is also a chance Grok or Gemini is steering them wrong.
Even a query to Google’s AI mode admits the limitations of AI medical consultations.
“AI medical advice is not consistently accurate and should not be relied upon for diagnosis or treatment,” Google AI mode says. “While generative AI models score highly on standardized medical exams, recent real-world studies show that AI chatbots provide incorrect or poor medical answers up to 24% to 50% of the time.”
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Here’s what you need to know:
How has AI changed doctor visits?
Doctor consultations are often quite short, and AI has made those minutes more efficient for patients and physicians.
Medical literature is notoriously hard to understand for people without medical training. AI can quickly reduce dense medical research into simple answers.
Dr. Latisha Malcom, who has been a primary care doctor for 29 years, said AI has greatly improved the communication she has with patients, because it can explain their symptoms in terms they can understand.
“If you’re seeing a bunch of symptoms and you don’t know how to put it together, and you put it all in, the AI system has given you a possibility of what it could be,” said Malcom, who is…
