Her Mom Got a New Kidney, Then Let AI Tell Her What to Do

In China, a 57-year-old kidney transplant recipient has turned to DeepSeek, an AI chatbot, for medical advice. As Viola Zhou writes for the Guardian, sometimes the results are troubling. She should know—that woman is her mother. Frustrated by the rushed, impersonal care she receives from the specialist she sees a few times a year following her 2020 transplant—appointments that last five minutes tops but require two days of travel—Zhou's mother started uploading lab reports and posing questions to DeepSeek. The interactions pleased her.

"You are my best health adviser!" she told the bot after it made suggestions like tweaking her immunosuppressant medication dosage, taking green tea extract, and sitting straighter to protect her kidney. "Being able to help you is my biggest motivation," the bot responded. "Your spirit of exploring health is amazing, too!" Though the bot frequently encouraged her to consult real doctors, "she began to feel she was sufficiently equipped to treat herself based on its guidance," Zhou writes, calling it a "worrying reliance." With her mother's permission, Zhou shared transcripts of some of the DeepSeek exchanges with two US nephrologists.

One characterized some of the kidney-related suggestions as "unproven, potentially harmful, unnecessary, or a 'kind of fantasy,'" Zhou writes. The other said DeepSeek had mistaken her mother's original diagnosis with a different rare kidney disease. "It is sort of gibberish, frankly," she said. Zhou shared their findings with her mother, who acknowledges she knew the bot wasn't all-knowing but said she remains drawn to the chatbot's constant availability and supportive tone. In her doctor's office, she fears being annoying with her questions. With DeepSeek, "I get to lead the conversation and ask whatever I want. It lets me get to the bottom of everything." (Read the full piece for much more.)