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Doctors are using AI to draft messages without telling patients

US healthcare organisations are trialling OpenAI’s GPT-3 for drafting clinician messages to patients. But not all patients are being informed and some AI researchers warn of errors creeping in

By Jeremy Hsu

9 May 2023

AI is helping to draft doctor messages

AI is helping to draft doctor messages

Getty Images/Maskot

A small but growing number of people in the US are receiving messages from their doctors drafted with the help of artificial intelligence – and some may not even know it.

It is the first step in a larger plan to use OpenAI’s large language models – the line of technology powering chatbots such as ChatGPT – within one of the largest US electronic health records systems operated by the company Epic. Although Epic and healthcare organisations participating in the pilot deployment describe this as…

Article amended on 12 May 2023

We clarified that Microsoft hosts GPT-3 in its data centres

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