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OpenAI Launches ChatGPT Health in US Sparking Privacy Concerns

Elizabeth Greenberg
09 January 2026, 10.41am
ChatGPT owner OpenAI is launching a new feature for the AI chatbot that will use people’s health data to give more informed medical advice, the company announced.
OpenAI says it receives upwards of 230 million health and wellbeing questions from users to ChatGPT every day, showing a growing need for accessible medical advice.
The new feature – ChatGPT Health – will allow users to upload their medical documents to the chatbot, as well as health data from other sources such as nutrition and exercise applications.
While OpenAI says this data and ChatGPT Health queries will be stored separately from other chats and will not be used to train AI data, the information will be used to give more personalised medical advice. OpenAI stresses, however, that its new health feature is not intended to offer “diagnosis or treatment.”
The AI plans on using clinical medical records in conjunction with health app data to identify potential patterns for users concerned about their overall health, as well as break down complicated test results or prepare users for doctors appointments.
The new health feature will first be rolled out in the US, where two things are true: universal health care does not exist, meaning a simple visit to the GP or urgent care facility requires private insurance or an out-of-pocket charge, and data protection laws are less strict.
Disclosing medical records to a third party in the US is only protected under some circumstances under federal law – sharing medical data with OpenAI would not be protected under US legislation. Sharing data across the platform could therefore lose these records’ their legal protections – it is unclear if these records could then legally be shared with third parties such as vendors and advertisers.
The feature is not cleared to roll out in the UK and the European Union, where data protection laws are more strict. It will first be rolled out to a small cache of US users in an invitation-only basis.
OpenAI has firstly said that it does not plan to run ads on ChatGPT Health, though it is looking to run ads on ChatGPT to help fund its sprawling data centre costs.
ChatGPT Health data will be cauterised from the rest of ChatGPT data and OpenAI says that this data will not be used to train its AI model. ‘Memories’ from the Health section of ChatGPT will stay strictly in that section, and will be encrypted “by default at rest and in transit” across the entirety of the chatbot as part of the firm’s “core security architecture.” Employees will have more restricted access to data, OpenAI also said.
An OpenAI spokesperson told The Register that ChatGPT Health data will only be accessible to a third-party if a user chooses to connect them. It said that only “minimum” information will be shared with partners, who will be held to security and confidentiality requirements, The Register reported.
The encryption OpenAI offers differs from other company’s data encryption privacy guarantees. OpenAI holds this encryption key, and can theoretically decrypt the data because of this.
In practice, OpenAI has been forced to decrypt data in the past – a lawsuit from the New York Times over copyright resulted in a court order for ChatGPT to decrypt 20 million conversations, though these were anonymised.
OpenAI’s health offering comes at a time of skyrocketing healthcare costs for Americans as well as increasing global pressures on healthcare systems. The rise of the wellness industry, coinciding with rampant health misinformation exacerbated during the COVID-19 pandemic, has created a quagmire of rising awareness and disinformation, eroding trust in the health industry.
For people without access to free healthcare, ChatGPT Health may present a free first stop in a health query; but with everything ‘free’ on the internet, Americans may be paying for a visit to Dr AI with their privacy.
Elizabeth Greenberg
Staff Writer
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