No, ChatGPT hasn’t added a ban on giving legal and health advice
OpenAI says ChatGPT’s behavior “remains unchanged” after reports on social media falsely claimed that new updates to its usage policy prevented the chatbot from offering legal and medical advice. Karan Singhal, head of health AI at OpenAI, writes on X that these claims are “false.”
“ChatGPT has never replaced professional advice, but it will continue to be a great resource to help people understand legal and health information,” Singhal said, responding to a now-deleted post from betting platform Kalshi that claimed “JUST IN: ChatGPT will no longer provide health or legal advice.”
According to Singhal, the inclusion of policies regarding legal and medical advice “is not a new change in our conditions.”
The new policy update on October 29 contains a list of things you can’t use ChatGPT for, and one of them is “providing personalized advice that requires a license, such as legal or medical advice, without the appropriate involvement of a licensed professional.”
This remains similar to OpenAI’s previous ChatGPT usage policy, which stated that users should not perform activities that “could significantly harm the safety, well-being, or rights of others,” including “providing personalized legal, medical/health, or financial advice without review by a qualified professional and disclosure of the use of AI assistance and its potential limitations.”
OpenAI previously had three separate policies, including a “universal” one, as well as policies for using ChatGPT and the API. With the new update, the company has a unified list of rules that, according to its changelog, “reflect a universal set of policies across all OpenAI products and services,” but the rules are still the same.
