Need an answer to a health-related question? Artificial intelligence could save you a trip to the doctor’s office. According to a 2025 survey conducted by the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania, 79 percent of U.S. adults use the internet to find answers to health questions, with 75 percent saying that AI-generated responses adequately address their queries sometimes, often or always. But what if you didn’t even have to surf the web in search of health information? That’s where AI doctors come in.
What Is an AI Doctor?
An AI doctor is a specialized chatbot trained on various sources of health data, including medical journals, academic databases and electronic health records. It uses techniques like natural language processing and natural language generation to understand user queries and provide relevant answers to health-related questions.
AI doctors are a newer wave of chatbots that’s picking up steam. Unlike popular general-purpose chatbots like ChatGPT, Claude and Grok, AI doctors are specifically trained on electronic health records, academic databases, medical journals and other sources of health data. They then use natural language processing to analyze written and verbal queries and produce answers that users can understand via natural language generation. Together, these abilities enable AI doctors to engage in intuitive conversations with users on a range of health topics.
Taking an optimistic view, AI doctors could simplify the patient experience and fill gaps in the healthcare system. But at the same time, the technology’s inherent flaws challenge the notion of medical chatbots as a viable replacement for patient-doctor interactions, and raise the specter of AI doing more harm than good to those who rely on it for their healthcare needs.
Why Are AI Doctors Becoming So Popular?
According to a Drip Hydration study, more than one-third of Americans have researched health concerns using AI, with 40 percent trusting AI-generated medical advice. So, what’s driving people to turn to AI in the first place? There are several reasons.
Faster Responses
Drip Hydration found that 43 percent of respondents use AI for health questions to receive faster answers, making it the most common reason. This isn’t surprising considering how long patient wait times have become in the U.S. Nationwide research from ECG Management Consultants revealed that it can take anywhere from 27 days to 70 days to book an appointment in major metropolitan areas. Given this reality, AI doctors can be a huge time-saver — and not just for patients, either.
“If doctors are swamped with paperwork and administrative processes, they can never get around to properly attending to the patients who actually need them,” Dr. Jonathan H. Chen, an assistant professor of medicine at Stanford University who has researched doctors’ use of chatbots, told Built In. “It is very plausible that chatbots can help in the near term with freeing up some of that administrative burden so physicians can focus on their patients.”
Rising Healthcare Costs
Avoiding high medical bills is why one-fifth of respondents in Drip Hydration’s survey chose to use AI for health questions. The United States is already notorious for having the most expensive healthcare system in the world, and rising costs are putting more pressure on patients. According to an October 2025 survey by health policy nonprofit KFF, 44 percent of U.S. adults aged 18-64 now say it is either “somewhat” or “very” difficult for them to cover healthcare costs. This number soars to above 80 percent when looking at those who are uninsured.
As a result, many patients may have no choice but to turn to AI tools because of their convenience and accessibility. Especially for those with limited or no insurance, it’s a better deal to get cheap medical advice through a monthly chatbot subscription rather than foot a hefty bill after visiting the doctor.
Poor Medical Care
Even when patients do land an appointment, they don’t always receive the best care. According to Drip Hydration, 34 percent of Americans didn’t feel like doctors took their symptoms seriously, and 25 percent received a misdiagnosis or a delayed diagnosis. AI doctors could then deliver accurate diagnoses faster than their human counterparts, empowering patients to address health issues in their early stages.
Concerns With AI Doctors
Despite compensating for some of the healthcare system’s shortcomings, AI doctors have problems of their own that may make them more of a liability than a lifesaver.
Hallucinations
AI tools have a tendency to hallucinate, or generate inaccurate or completely made-up information and present it as truth. In a study evaluating the accuracy of large language models, researchers discovered that the models produced health disinformation on 88 percent of health queries. To make matters worse, a 2024 KFF survey found that 57 percent of adults don’t feel confident determining whether AI-generated information is true or false.
It’s one thing for AI to repeatedly miss the mark, but not being able to detect when this happens can lead to lasting consequences. Users may follow the wrong treatment plan after a misdiagnosis, or ignore serious symptoms that require immediate care — and, unlike with a real doctor, they’d have little legal recourse against the AI company.
If AI hallucinations continue without any solution, it’s hard to see how AI doctors could break into the mainstream when people can’t even trust their answers.
Inconsistent Answers
While hallucinations can sometimes be easy to spot, what’s more subtle are the variations that sneak into chatbots’ answers. These slight differences can be just as misleading as hallucinations and further erode the credibility of AI-generated content.
“Issues with accuracy and bias in current generations of chatbots limit their use in high-stakes healthcare settings. Perhaps even more challenging is not that chatbots are sometimes wrong, it is that they are not even consistent,” Chen said. “They have an underlying random stochastic nature with how they auto-complete their answers, which means you can’t even count on getting the same answer if you ask the same question more than once.”
Data Privacy Risks
Considering that users already feel comfortable holding deeply personal conversations with chatbots, they could very well disclose highly sensitive health information to a chatbot without even realizing it. AI companies are not beholden to the same kinds of privacy laws that real medical practitioners are, such as HIPAA. Therefore, once this data is stored, there’s nothing stopping them from using it to train and refine their AI models, posing greater privacy complications for users. In addition, patient-chatbot interactions could blur the line between user consent and data privacy violations, making it harder to regulate these tools and ensure that patient data remains confidential.
Could AI Replace Doctors?
Although AI is still a work in progress, it’s been gaining ground in the healthcare industry. A 2025 survey by the American Medical Association found that the number of physicians using AI jumped from 38 percent in 2023 to 66 percent in 2024 — a rapid shift for a sector that’s not known for quick technological adoption. If this trend continues, AI may do more than simply automate mundane tasks in the near future, with Microsoft founder Bill Gates suggesting that AI could replace many doctors within 10 years.
Of course, the general public would need to be on board with AI replacing face-to-face time with human doctors, and that may not be the case. According to a study published by researchers at the University of Minnesota and the University of Michigan, about 58 percent of U.S. adults don’t trust healthcare systems to ensure AI tools don’t harm them, and around 66 percent don’t trust healthcare systems to use AI responsibly. Without broader buy-in, implementing AI tools simply doesn’t make sense for healthcare providers.
Perhaps this icy attitude toward AI will thaw if the technology takes on more social roles and physical forms that appeal to humans. For now, AI may be limited to augmenting healthcare professionals rather than fully automating positions, although the continued use of AI doctors could be a sign of things to come.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why are more people using AI doctors?
It can take months to book a doctor’s appointment, which could end up costing hundreds of dollars. AI doctors serve as a cheap and convenient way to get answers to health-related questions. In addition, human doctors can misdiagnose patients or deliver poor care, so users may also turn to AI doctors for a second opinion.
What are the risks of using AI doctors?
AI doctors may provide different answers to the same question asked multiple times, or they could hallucinate and deliver false or nonsensical responses. In addition, users may share sensitive health information, which can then be used to train and fine-tune models. This presents privacy risks that threaten the confidentiality of patient data.
