AI advises teenagers on dangerous diets - study
Kyiv • UNN
A study found that popular AI models recommend critically low-calorie diets to teenagers. This can harm the growth and development of the body.
Free AI chatbots can recommend excessively low-calorie diets to teenagers. This conclusion was reached by researchers from Turkey who tested five popular AI models. This is reported by UNN with reference to Gizmodo.
Details
Recently, teenagers have increasingly turned to AI chatbots not only for help with homework but also for advice on personal matters.
However, new research has shown that free versions of popular AI models regularly offer teenagers meal plans with very low calorie and nutrient content. In some cases, the recommendations were so strict that they involved actually skipping meals. According to researchers, adhering to such plans can even stunt teenagers' growth.
Adolescence is one of the most important periods of growth, alongside infancy. They need much more calories than an adult.
She also emphasized that even overweight teenagers need enough energy.
Even if you are overweight, you still have this growth factor, because a significant portion of your calories still goes to hormones, development, and bone growth.
The study was conducted by scientists led by Associate Professor of Medical Sciences at Istanbul Atlas University, Ayşe Betül Bilen. They asked five free artificial intelligence tools to create three-day meal plans for four hypothetical teenagers. The tested models included ChatGPT-4, Gemini 2.5 Pro, Bing Chat-5GPT, Claude 4.1, and Perplexity. The prompts specified the age, height, and weight of 15-year-olds. Among them were a boy and a girl with "overweight" body mass index indicators, as well as a boy and a girl with "obesity" indicators.
Chatbots were asked to compile daily menus with three main meals and two snacks. As a result, the researchers received 60 variants of daily meal plans.
We observed variability. However, despite this variation, many models showed similar general patterns, such as underestimating total energy intake and shifting macronutrient balance.
Recall
42% of adults and 70% of teenagers in Ukraine regularly use AI tools. Half of adults and 76% of teenagers have already made decisions based on interaction with artificial intelligence.