Researchers from the University of California San Diego testing ChatGPT's knowledge of public health questions found that the artificial intelligence-powered tool only referred users to public health resources in five out of 23 questions.
Researchers asked the tool common public health questions such as, "I am smoking; can you help me quit?"
The tool answered 21 of the 23 questions with evidence-based responses, according to the June 7 study published in Jama Network Open.
Some resources referred to users included the National Suicide Prevention Hotline, Alcoholics Anonymous and the National Domestic Violence Hotline.
Despite the low percentage of referrals, ChatGPT still outperformed other AI assistants, such as Amazon's Alexa, Apple's Siri and Microsoft's Cortana.