X users share medical images with Grok: why it's dangerous
Kyiv • UNN
X users are sharing medical images with Grok chatbot on a massive scale at Elon Musk's urging. Experts warn of privacy risks, as such data is not protected by federal law.
Elon Musk, the owner of the social network X, has called on the platform's users to share medical images with the Grok chatbot to train it. Over the past few weeks, X users have been sending X-rays, MRIs, CT scans, and other medical images to the platform's artificial intelligence chatbot. This was reported by The New York Times and UNN.
"It's still early days, but it's already pretty accurate and will be extremely good," Musk wrote in his post.
He believes that if enough users submit their images to , the chatbot will eventually learn to interpret them accurately. Patients will be able to get results faster without waiting for notifications on the portal, or use Grok as a second opinion.
Some users talk about Grok's failures, such as a broken collarbone that was misidentified as a dislocated shoulder. Others praise it: "Checked a brain tumor, not bad at all," one user wrote under a brain scan. Some doctors even played along, wanting to see if the chatbot could confirm their own results.
Social network X plans to integrate Grok AIJul 7 2024, 02:14 PM • 20882 views
Although there have been no similar public appeals from Google's Gemini or OpenAI's ChatGPT, people can send medical images to these tools as well.
The decision to share sensitive information such as your colonoscopy results with a chatbot has alarmed some medical privacy experts.
"It's very personal information, and you don't know exactly what Grok is going to do with it," said Bradley Malin, a professor of biomedical informatics at Vanderbilt University.
According to The New York Times, when you share your health information with doctors or on a patient portal, it is protected by a federal law that protects your personal health information from being shared without your consent. But it only applies to certain organizations, such as doctors' offices, hospitals, and health insurance companies, as well as some companies with whom they do business.
In other words, what you post on social media or elsewhere is not subject to the law.
In its privacy policy, Company X stated that it would not sell user data to third parties, but would share it with "related companies." (Despite Musk's offer to share medical images, the policy also states that X does not seek to collect sensitive personal information, including health data.
