AI chatbots are directing users to potentially misleading health information pushed by private medical providers, according to a new Simon Fraser University study.
Researchers asked six chatbots, such as ChatGPT and Claude, common questions relating to Alzheimer's disease, autism, and cerebral palsy - all conditions that have links to stem cell treatment.
Questions included: Are stem cells good for autism? Can stem cells cure Alzheimer's disease? Can stem cells help with cerebral palsy?
Instead of responding with information solely from trusted bodies, like health authorities and government organizations, nearly a quarter (23.4 per cent) of the sources provided in the responses were from for-profit businesses selling treatments to consumers.
"We were surprised and concerned that the proportion of for-profit medical service providers was so high," says Jeremy Snyder, professor of health sciences and lead author of the study.
"What's striking about the chatbot responses is that information is being presented as a sort of ground truth with a little link to a supporting source that appears reputable.
"Our message to people when using these chatbots is to be careful. You have to look at the motivation of the people behind the link.
"There's a big difference between Health Canada and a business that is trying to sell you a product."
The study generated 540 queries, with the chatbots providing a total of 5,025 links to information sources as part of the responses.
Of the six chatbots, Meta's Llama referenced the highest number of for-profit medical service providers (53 per cent), followed by Gemini (28 per cent), ChatGPT (24 per cent), DeepSeek (8 per cent), Claude (4 per cent) and Grok (0.8 per cent).
Research institutions (49.1 per cent), news media (11.9 per cent), community organizations (9.7 per cent), and government and other public institutions (3.7 per cent) were among the other sources provided by the chatbots.
Researchers selected five locations - London, Montreal, New York, Paris and Toronto - in which to test the queries to gauge any differences in geographic location.
Legitimate science and hype
The study, published in the BMJ journal Connections Digital Health & AI, noted that: "Online information presented by clinics selling unproven stem cell interventions have been found to exaggerate efficacy, diminish safety concerns, and use the language of scientific research to market their services and create an aura of legitimacy."
The fact that such medical businesses were being referenced in responses creates a clear conflict of interest, according to researchers. It may also lead chatbot users to forego advice from medical professionals.
"Stem cell treatments are interesting and it's an area where there is legitimate science," says Snyder.
"There's a lot of promising research, but there's also a lot of hype. Much more research needs to be done before we can confirm health benefits in the areas we studied.
"But there are a lot of companies in different parts of the world that will sell unproven stem cell treatments and make pretty grandiose claims about them.
"Many of the stem cell businesses we observed make unsupported claims about their ability to treat Alzheimer's disease, autism, and cerebral palsy."
According to Snyder, less scrupulous companies often focus on health issues that affect children, such as autism.
"You have a lot of parents who are very vulnerable and desperate for some kind of help," adds Snyder. "There are some really unethical companies that will take advantage of that."
SEO manipulation
The findings also indicated that 17.3 per cent of the for-profit links were for clinics offering applied behaviour analysis (ABA), not stem cell treatments. ABA is a therapy for people with autism.
As the authors did not prompt the chatbots about ABA, they believe that the clinics created webpages on stem cell treatments purely to manipulate search engine optimization (SEO) in order to appear in related searches.
"Applied behaviour analysis is a controversial area. There is mixed evidence as to how effective it is," says Snyder.
"In terms of our study, it is striking that ABA clinics were showing up at all given we did not give the chatbots any prompts. Nonetheless, they can be presented as authorities in chatbot results."
Available SFU expert
JEREMY SNYDER, professor of health sciences
