The right — and wrong — ways for patients to use chatbots

At 3 a.m., everything feels worse. That unfamiliar ache in your side? Not awful, but persistent. You know better than to panic-search symptoms — but your doctor’s office won’t open for hours, and Google catastrophizes more than it clarifies. So you ask a chatbot instead.

What you get isn’t just information. You get a story.

That’s what makes this moment different from the past 20 years of digital health-seeking, when patients would turn to WebMD or “Dr. Google,” often to their doctors’ dismay. Now, instead of searching, patients are using technology to shape explanations. Generative AI tools don’t just summarize; they simulate conversation. They let people organize thoughts, explore outcomes, and rehearse how they’ll describe what they’re feeling. The result isn’t a diagnosis. It’s a dra