INSIGHTS
August 3, 2026

Doctor Who?

“Wait it out.” That's what ChatGPT told a Florida man whose symptoms turned out to be a life-threatening pulmonary embolism, according to a lawsuit recently filed against OpenAI and Sam Altman. The plaintiff’s argument? Similar advice from a physician could invite a malpractice claim. But ChatGPT isn't a physician—and the case could set legal precedent for who’s responsible when AI dispenses doctor-like advice. The suit lands as OpenAI rolls out ChatGPT Health, allowing users to connect medical records and Apple Health data while maintaining that the product is designed to support—not replace—professional care. ICYMI, our latest Consumer Adoption Survey found that use of an AI chatbot for health information by U.S. adults had doubled to 32% in one year, so there’s reason to believe use of AI for personal health needs will continue to grow.

The market keeps pushing into increasingly doctor-like use cases. Just last week, Counsel Health launched Counsel Studio, a white-label platform that lets health plans and consumer health brands like Oura embed physician-supervised AI care. Doctronic’s AI autonomously renews prescriptions in Utah, and it has now acquired pediatric virtual care provider Summer Health, offering it a path into pediatric care and access to a large repository of parent-clinician conversations. Meanwhile, regulators are still sorting out implications of AI adoption and researchers are exploring what a new set of medical AI benchmarks might look like. And the open science research initiative, ARISE, launched the Medical AI Superintelligence Test to evaluate model performance against clinical benchmarks.

Some states are taking action to enact policy measures (Delaware, for example, has barred AI from holding medical licenses or using protected titles such as physician or nurse), but a big open question remains: who is liable when AI gets it wrong? The Florida lawsuit proves that the delineation between AI assistance, supervised delegation, and autonomous action are becoming increasingly consequential.

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Headlines

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