Man claims chatbot saved his dog's life after vet couldn't identify blood condition

A dog owner has said he was able to use an AI chatbot to correctly diagnose his dog's illness after his local vet was initially unable to identify a blood condition.

Taking to Twitter to share what had happened, user Cooper (@peakcooper) explained he logged in to ChatGPT after his border collie Sassy was diagnosed with a tick-borne disease, only for her symptoms to then worsen despite treatment.

"ChatGPT saved my dog's life," he wrote in a lengthy thread.

"After my dog got diagnosed with a tick-borne disease, the vet started her on the proper treatment, and despite a serious anemia, her condition seemed to be improving relatively well. After a few days however, things took a turn for the worse."

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"I noticed her gums were very pale, so we rushed back to the vet. The blood test revealed an even more severe anemia, even worse than the first day we came in."

He said the vet continued to run more tests but had "no clue what it could be" and poor Sassy's condition was "getting worse and worse."

"In the meantime, it occurred to me that medical diagnostics seemed like the sort of thing GPT4 could potentially be really good at, so I described the situation in great detail," he said.

An AI chatbot responds to questions posed to it in natural language as if it were a real person. It responds using a combination of pre-programmed scripts and machine learning algorithms. When asked a question, the chatbot will answer using the knowledge database that is currently available to it and information available across the internet.

Cooper described the situation in detail even sending through the actual transcribed blood test results from multiple days of tests.

And while the chatbot cautioned that it was not a veterinarian it was able to come up with a diagnosis within minutes.

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Internal bleeding had already been ruled out by ultrasound leaving IMHA (immune-medicated hemolytic anemia) as the only possible diagnosis. When he offered this information to a second vet, they were able to confirm the diagnosis.

"After numerous other tests, the diagnosis was confirmed. GPT4 was right," Cooper wrote.

Thankfully, Sassy was then placed on the appropriate treatment and has made a full recovery.

"I can't imagine what medical diagnostics will look like 20 years from now," he added. "The most impressive part was how well it read and interpreted the blood test results."

Of course, he has also since added that people should not follow any online program's advice blindly, and should always seek professional opinions when making decisions about their pet's health.