US — A KFF poll released on Tuesday indicates that US adults who frequently seek health advice from artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots are more likely to believe myths about vaccines. The connection between AI use and belief in vaccine falsehoods remained while controlling for factors such as age, race, education, and political partisanship.

The KFF survey, conducted in May, polled a representative sample of 2,480 US adults. The poll found a correlation between the use of AI tools and chatbots and belief in falsehoods, such as the claim that vaccines cause autism or that the measles vaccine poses more danger than the corresponding virus. A previous KFF survey from March found that about a third of US adults seek out health advice from AI.

Among US adults who use AI tools to find health information at least once a week, 35% believe that it is "definitely or probably true" that measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccines have been proven to cause autism in children. In contrast, 29% of US adults who occasionally consult AI for health and 20% of those who do not use AI for health hold this belief. Additionally, 29% of frequent AI users for health believe that mRNA vaccines can change DNA, compared to 20% of US adults who never use AI for health.

The KFF poll also revealed that 22% of frequent AI users believe the measles vaccine is more dangerous than the measles virus. For individuals who do not use AI for health, 15% hold this belief. The KFF poll did not ask which AI models respondents used while seeking out health advice.