An analysis of Google Trends revealed that the public release of ChatGPT in November 2022 did not result in a decline in Google searches for the keywords “Physician” and “Hospital” in subsequent months. This suggests that internet users have not been using ChatGPT as a substitute for doctor consultations, at least not to any observable extent. The study was published in Annals of Biomedical Engineering.
ChatGPT is a natural language processing software model developed by OpenAI. It is designed to understand and generate human-like text responses. ChatGPT can engage in text-based conversations with users, providing answers to questions, generating contextually relevant responses, and offer information on a wide range of topics. It has been trained on a vast corpus of text from the internet, which allows it to exhibit a broad knowledge base and adapt to various conversational contexts.
As it is open to public and there is a free to use option, the number of ChatGPT users has been growing rapidly. In August 2023 it had 180.5 million registered users. Initial studies of its use showed that people use it for a very wide variety of tasks.
These include various business uses, but many individuals ask its advice on various personal matters ranging from practical issues over love life, to medical and health topics. However, ChatGPT is also prone to a phenomenon called AI “hallucinations,” where it gives answers that appear coherent but are factually incorrect or nonsensical.
Given the wide range of topics it covers, , there was speculation that individuals might begin to use it as an alternative to doctor consultations. Yung-Shuo Kao, the author of the new analysis, endeavored to ascertain if this was transpiring. He hypothesized that if individuals were turning to ChatGPT rather than doctors, it would manifest as a decline in Google Trends data related to searches for hospitals and physicians.
This researcher analyzed Google Trends data for the period between June 2022 and June 2023. He looked at relative search volumes of four topics – “ChatGPT,” “artificial intelligence,” “physician,” and “hospital.” ChatGPT became available to the public in November 2022, in the middle of the period this researcher analyzed.
If a visible share of the population started using ChatGPT as a replacement for consultations with medical professionals, this might be visible as a reduction in the volume of Google searches on the topic of “physician” and “hospital.” At the same time, the increasing awareness and interest of the general public for ChatGPT and its capabilities would cause an increase in the volume of searches for ChatGPT and artificial intelligence.
The results showed that the relative volume of searchers for physician and hospital remained very stable throughout the studied period. On the other hand, the relative volume of Google searches for artificial intelligence started increasing visibly from December 2022 onward. The relative volume of searches for ChatGPT started from 0 in the period before November 2022 and rose very quickly from that point onward. In March and April 2023, it was the most searched of the 4 studied terms.
“In conclusion, ChatGPT has not been used to replace doctors from the public interest analysis,” Kao wrote.
This analysis presented in this letter to the editor makes a notable contribution to understanding trends in ChatGPT use. However, it should be noted that the use of ChatGPT for medical consultations might not really lead to a reduction in Google searches for physician and hospital. When planning or scheduling their medical appointments, many people do it in ways that do not include a Google search at all.
The letter to the editor, titled “Do People Use ChatGPT to Replace Doctor? A Google Trends Analysis”, was authored by Yung‑Shuo Kao.