How AI health care chatbots learn from the questions of an Indian women’s organization

NEW YORK (AP) — Komal Vilas Thatkare says she doesn’t have anyone to ask about her most private health questions.

“There are only men in my home — no ladies,” said the 32-year-old mother and housewife in Mumbai. “I don’t speak to anyone here. So I used this app as it helps me in my personal problems.”

The app she uses is powered by artificial intelligence running on OpenAI’s ChatGPT model, that Myna Mahila Foundation, a local women’s organization, is developing. Thatkare asks the Myna Bolo chatbot questions and it offers answers. Through those interactions, Thatkare learned about a contraceptive pill and how to take it.

Thatkare is one of 80 test users the foundation recruited to help train the chatbot. It draws on a customized database of medical information about sexual health, but the chatbot’s potential success relies on test users like Thatkare to train it.

The chatbot, currently a pilot project, represents what many hope will be part of the impact of AI on health care around the globe: to deliver accurate medical information in personalized responses that can reach many more people than in-person clinics or trained medical workers. In this case, the chatbot’s focus on reproductive health also offers vital information that — because of social norms — is difficult to access elsewhere.

“If this actually could provide this nonjudgmental, private advice to women, then it could really be a gamechanger when it comes to accessing information about sexual reproductive health,” said Suhani Jalota, founder and CEO of the Myna Mahila Foundation, which received a $100,000 grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation last summer to develop the chatbot, as part of a cohort of organizations in low- and middle-income countries