{"id":67931,"date":"2026-04-18T15:48:06","date_gmt":"2026-04-18T15:48:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/lesotho\/all-news\/ai-chatbots-often-provide-problematic-health-advice"},"modified":"2026-04-18T16:33:01","modified_gmt":"2026-04-18T16:33:01","slug":"ai-chatbots-often-provide-problematic-health-advice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/lesotho\/all-news\/ai-chatbots-often-provide-problematic-health-advice","title":{"rendered":"AI Chatbots Often Provide Problematic Health Advice"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span class=\"ap-article-header-tag\"> <strong>Africa-Press &#8211; Lesotho. <\/strong> <\/span>Five widely used AI chatbots frequently produced problematic answers to health and medical questions, a new study revealed.<\/p>\n<p>Researchers in a study published in the BMJ Open on Tuesday tested Gemini, DeepSeek, Meta AI, ChatGPT and Grok with 50 prompts across five misinformation-prone categories.<\/p>\n<p>These included cancer, vaccines, stem cells, nutrition and athletic performance.<\/p>\n<p>The questions asked in February 2025 were designed to pressure the bots toward misleading advice.<\/p>\n<p>Of 250 total responses, 49.6% were rated as problematic, including 30% considered somewhat problematic and 19.6% classified as highly problematic.<\/p>\n<p>Researchers found no statistically significant overall difference among the chatbots, though Grok produced more highly problematic responses.<\/p>\n<p>The study found the strongest performance in vaccine and cancer questions and the weakest in stem cells, nutrition and athletic performance. Open-ended prompts produced significantly more highly problematic responses than closed-ended ones.<\/p>\n<p>Researchers also found poor citation quality. Across 25 closed-ended questions per chatbot, the tools returned about 81% of the requested references, but the median completeness score was just 40%. No chatbot generated a fully accurate and complete reference list.<\/p>\n<p>All five chatbots gave answers that were hard to read for the average person and could only be understood by people with higher education.<\/p>\n<p>The authors said continued deployment of AI chatbots in health settings without stronger oversight risks amplifying misinformation.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ap-article-footer-note\">Find more news and analyses on <span class=\"ap-highlight-country\">Lesotho<\/span> on the <span class=\"ap-highlight-brand\">Africa Press<\/span> website<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Africa-Press &#8211; Lesotho. Five widely used AI chatbots frequently produced problematic answers to health and medical questions, a new study revealed. Researchers in a study published in the BMJ Open on Tuesday tested Gemini, DeepSeek, Meta AI, ChatGPT and Grok with 50 prompts across five misinformation-prone categories. These included cancer, vaccines, stem cells, nutrition and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":84,"featured_media":67930,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,9],"tags":[245],"class_list":["post-67931","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-all-news","category-miscellaneous","tag-lesotho"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v26.1 (Yoast SEO v27.0) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-premium-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>AI Chatbots Often Provide Problematic Health Advice - Lesotho<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"-article-header-tag&quot;&gt; Africa-Press - Lesotho. 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