OpenAI is expanding ChatGPT deeper into personal healthcare at a moment when the promise of convenience is colliding with fresh questions about risk. The company’s new nationwide U.S. rollout gives millions of adults a way to connect medical records and wellness data to an AI chatbot, even as critics warn that health advice is a much higher-stakes use case than ordinary search.

The rollout makes ChatGPT Health available to U.S. users over 18 across service tiers, letting people connect information from Apple Health, hospital systems such as Epic and Oracle Health, and services including One Medical, Function, and MyFitnessPal.¹ OpenAI says the aim is to help users interpret lab results, track changes over time, and ask more informed questions in everyday chat rather than inside a separate health-only hub.²

From OpenAI’s perspective, the case for expansion is scale and utility. The company says “more than 300 million people turn to ChatGPT with health-related questions” every week, and argues that connected data can make those conversations more personal and useful while still “supporting, not replacing, the care you receive from medical professionals.”² Executives have also pointed to model gains: during a briefing, OpenAI vice president Ashley Alexander said the systems “are now capable of reasoning at levels that are better than clinician level,” though health lead Karan Singhal reportedly said he would “temper” that claim and cited only “individual studies” pointing in that direction.³

The skeptical view is less about whether AI can summarize records and more about whether users will treat it as medical judgment. TechCrunch noted the broader launch came just after a Florida pastor sued OpenAI, alleging ChatGPT gave him dangerous advice that delayed care.¹ OpenAI, for its part, continues to stress that the service is “not intended for use in the diagnosis or treatment of any health condition” and says connected health data and related conversations are not used to train its models or target ads.¹²

On X, OpenAI leaders framed the launch as a practical tool: Greg Brockman wrote that users can “securely connect supported medical records so ChatGPT can understand your personal context and be more helpful,” while Sam Altman amplified a post saying the feature can make conversations “more personal and useful.”Greg Brockman (gdb)⁴Sam Altman (sama)⁵ That, ultimately, is the tension at the center of the launch: OpenAI is betting that more context will make AI health guidance safer and more useful, while critics question whether broader access will only raise the stakes when the system gets it wrong.