Since the World Health Organization (WHO) declared a pandemic state with the irruption of the SARS-CoV-2 virus on March 11, 2020, there have been more than 700 million infected as well as 7 million deaths.1 This makes the event the greatest global public health threat in the 21st century. Therefore, it is obvious that establishing global awareness regarding SARS CoV2 and COVID-19, as along with prevention measures, is of utmost importance and using accurate information is the main corner stone to support it.
According to available scientific literature, the spread of misinformation on social media has contributed as a critical factor for unfavorable feedbacks in the general population regarding COVID-19 vaccination.2,3 At the other hand, artificial intelligence (AI) technologies are becoming increasingly popular among healthcare sectors. AI-based techniques are emerged as a useful tool in releasing faster and more effective information that may lead to an upgrade in healthcare services.3,4 In accordance with this fact, the application of Chatbot Generative Pre-Trained Transformer (ChatGPT) to COVID-19 vaccine conspiracy information has been investigated by several researchers. Meo et al. reveal that the ChatGPT platform has achieved satisfactory multiple choice questions (MCQs) grades (44/60) regarding COVID-19 pandemic-allied examination; they believed that ChatGPT could give support to medical educators, and healthcare authorities in making global understanding in relation to SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, and COVID-19 vaccines.2 Alipour et al. (2024) showed that social platforms, e.g., Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, YouTube, and ChatGPT have played crucial roles in disseminating information and promoting vaccination during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, they found that ChatGPT spread their information more gradually than other-related platforms.3
Sallam et al. investigated the role of OpenAI ChatGPT content as a source of SARS-CoV2 vaccine conspiracy beliefs. They concluded that ChatGPT could be considered as a correct source of acquisition of answers regarding clinical efficacy and safety of COVID-19 vaccines. However, there might also be incorrect information due to misleading information delivered.4 Salas et al. as well as Tekinay et al. also exhibited that the ChatGPT responses regarding COVID-19 vaccines were generally satisfactory but there were also false and incorrect responses.5,6 The review of the available studies disclose that ChatGPT platform could not be applied as a reliable alternative source such as the WHO or the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommendations.
Although AI-based technologies are generating the overall satisfactory response regarding various aspects concerning COVID-19 vaccines, chatbots such as ChatGPT are vulnerable to generate erroneous content due to errors or even due to human factors and misunderstandings. Furthermore, there are concerns regarding the privacy and security of health data that is used as input information to feed these chatbots. Thus, it is essential that AI-based contents are thoroughly supervised by a third expert person before releasing the information to the public. The review of available literature highlighted that ChatGPT could not be used as the sole informative source for healthcare sectors and even less to the general public; their content should be interpreted with extreme caution.
FundingNot applicable.
Author's contributionAll authors have actively contributed in writing, editing and revision of the manuscript.
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