‘ChatGPT listened when my GP didn’t’: why women turn to AI on health
When Katie finally sat down in her GP’s surgery in November she had been in pain for years. Since the birth of her daughter in July 2023, sex had been agony. Yet the mother of three, a teacher, had delayed booking an appointment — she simply didn’t have the time.
After explaining her pain to a stranger, she was met with a shrug. “I was told that this is just what happens after kids. I felt so ignored and so awful. I cried; I felt invisible.”
Feeling failed by a human doctor, she turned to ChatGPT. “I know that AI is programmed to acknowledge me; it said something like, ‘that must be really stressful and tough to deal with right now,’ and then gave me a list of things my pain could be attributed to. It instantly put me at ease,” Katie, 28, said.
She is now in the majority. A study of 1,000 UK women aged 20 to 50 found that 53% would use a free AI tool for medical advice, even while acknowledging the 20 per cent error rate.
The report by Intimina, a Swedish company that makes women’s health products, Sixty-six per cent of women admitted they had avoided booking a GP appointment or collecting a prescription to avoid associated costs and 47% said the cost of living had led them to delay buying treatments until symptoms felt “severe”.
However, a London School of Economics study last year found that AI models systematically downplayed women’s symptoms compared to men’s.
Dr Susanna Unsworth, a women’s health expert with Intimina, said: “AI lacks the clinical nuance essential in intimate health. Self-treating based on a chatbot’s guess can lead to inappropriate treatment and prolonged suffering.”
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Source: The Times, 8 March 2026