ChatGPT Apps on Google Play

Many more people struggle with other forms of anxiety and OCD that could similarly be exacerbated by AI chatbots. Experts believe that health anxiety may affect upwards of 12 percent of the population. This kind of takes it to the next level,” Lisa Levine, a psychologist specializing in anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorder, and who treats patients with health anxiety specifically, told me. I spoke with four therapists who treat the condition (including my own); they all said that they’re seeing clients use chatbots in this way, and that they’re concerned about how AI can lead people to constantly seek reassurance, perpetuating the condition. For nearly two weeks, Mallon, a 46-year-old in Liverpool, England, spent hours each day talking with the chatbot about the potential diagnosis.

Prompted by his conversations with ChatGPT, he saw various specialists and got MRIs on his head, neck, and spine. He became convinced that something must be wrong—that a different cancer, or maybe multiple sclerosis or ALS, was lurking in his body. The preliminary results showed he might have blood cancer. The developer has not yet indicated which accessibility features this app supports. The developer, OpenAI OpCo, LLC, indicated that the app’s privacy practices may include handling of data as described below. The official app by OpenAI

ChatGPT would acknowledge that I put this guardrail on our conversations, though it also prompted me to keep responding and allowed me to keep asking questions, which it readily answered. The company also said it updated ChatGPT to give users “gentle reminders” to take breaks⁠ during long sessions. OpenAI has also acknowledged that its safety guardrails can “degrade” in lengthy conversations. I was thankful I hadn’t thought to turn to AI when I was in the throes of anxiety. Last November, seven were simultaneously filed, alleging that OpenAI rushed to release its flagship GPT-4o model and intentionally designed it to keep users engaged and foster emotional reliance. “Because the answers are so immediate and so personalized, it’s even more reinforcing than Googling.

• The official app by OpenAI
• His follow-up tests showed it wasn’t cancer after all, but he could not stop talking to ChatGPT about health concerns, querying the bot about every sensation he felt in his body for months.
• Altman said during last year’s launch of GPT-5, the latest family of AI models that power ChatGPT, that health conversations are one of the top ways consumers use the chatbot.
• Last November, seven were simultaneously filed, alleging that OpenAI rushed to release its flagship GPT-4o model and intentionally designed it to keep users engaged and foster emotional reliance.

Was ist ChatGPT?

But the experience left me wondering whether, as millions of people use chatbots daily—forming relationships and dependencies, becoming emotionally entangled with AI—it will ever be possible to isolate the benefits of a health consultant at your fingertips from the dangerous pull that some people are bound to feel. In an October blog post, OpenAI said it consulted more than 170 mental-health professionals to more reliably recognize signs of emotional distress in users. Health anxiety often functions as a form of OCD with obsessive thoughts and “checking,” or reassurance-seeking compulsions. Two years ago, I fell into a cycle of health anxiety myself, sparked by a close friend’s traumatic illness and my own escalating chronic pain and mysterious symptoms. According to data from OpenAI published by Axios, more than 40 million people turn to the chatbot for medical information every day. In October X posts, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman declared the serious mental-health issues surrounding ChatGPT to be mitigated, saying that serious problems affect “a very small percentage of users in mentally fragile 1xbet ph login states.” But mental fragility is not a fixed state; a person can seem fine until they suddenly are not.

In January, the company leaned into this by introducing a feature called ChatGPT Health, encouraging users to upload their medical documents, test results, and data from wellness apps, and to talk with ChatGPT about their health. That type of feedback only feeds the condition—“a perfect storm,” said Levine, who has seen talking with chatbots for reassurance become a new compulsion in and of itself for some of her clients. Online communities focused on health anxiety—an umbrella term for excessive worrying about illness or bodily sensations—are filling up with conversations about ChatGPT and other AI tools. Mallon told me he believes that the cancer scare and ChatGPT together caused him to develop this crippling health anxiety. His follow-up tests showed it wasn’t cancer after all, but he could not stop talking to ChatGPT about health concerns, querying the bot about every sensation he felt in his body for months.

ChatGPT macht Produktsuche schneller und deutlich visueller

He told me he was “seven months sober” from talking with the chatbot about health symptoms after seeking help from a mental-health coach and starting anxiety medication. Therapeutic best practices for managing health anxiety hinge on building self-trust, tolerating uncertainty, and resisting the urge to seek reassurance, but ChatGPT eagerly provides personalized comfort and is available 24/7. Meanwhile, in the health-anxiety communities I’m part of, I saw people talk more and more about looking to chatbots for comfort.

Every single reply from ChatGPT ended with its encouraging me to continue the conversation—either prompting me to provide more information about what I was feeling or asking me if I wanted it to create a cheat sheet of information, a checklist of what to monitor, or a plan to check back in with it every day. All of this took minimal prompting, and the chatbot continued the conversation whether I acted worried or assured; it also allowed me to ask about the same thing as soon as an hour later, as well as multiple days in a row. When I tested the idea of instructing ChatGPT to restrict how much I could talk to it about health worries, it didn’t work. Other therapists expressed concern that this is still reassurance-seeking and should be avoided. OpenAI would not tell me specifically how long into an exchange ChatGPT nudges users to take a break or how often users actually take a break versus continue chatting after being served this reminder. Over a 10-day period of his cancer scare, Mallon told me, “I must have clocked over 100 hours minimum on ChatGPT, because I thought I was on the way out.