People often ask chatbots for medical advice or share their personal records online to get quick health tips. This growing habit comes with hidden privacy risks because many apps have rules that let them collect and sell your private conversations. Now, two lawmakers are pushing to update an existing privacy law to stop tech companies from passing your sensitive medical details to outside data brokers.
Lawmakers want to stop chatbots from sharing your medical history
Senator Elizabeth Warren and Representative Mary Gay Scanlon plan to introduce a new version of the Health and Location Data Protection Act. The updated rule specifically targets artificial intelligence companies. The goal is to prevent these apps from handing over user chats and uploaded files to data brokers.
This push happens right as major tech companies encourage users to share more medical information. Earlier this year, Elon Musk asked users to send MRI scans to his Grok tool. Around the same time, OpenAI launched a specific ChatGPT health feature, while Anthropic introduced a similar option for its Claude bot. Most of these AI platforms use your input as training data by default.
Experts warn against asking basic chatbots for medical advice since they often give wrong answers. For those who still want to use voice assistants for private matters, Apple maintains strict privacy rules for Siri. The built-in assistant does not collect or sell personal user data. However, experts still hope the government will eventually pass a broad federal privacy law to protect everyone online.
