Asked whether a patient could safely take Paxlovid together with verapamil, a common blood-pressure medication, ChatGPT confidently replied there was no interaction. The answer is dangerous: ritonavir, a component of Paxlovid, inhibits verapamil metabolism and can cause dangerous hypotension. In the same study, nearly three-quarters of ChatGPT's drug-related answers were incomplete or wrong, and when asked for citations it fabricated nonexistent references.
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Expert: npj Digital Medicine Comment authors, medical and legal scholars ChatGPT's confident 'no interaction' answer is wrong — and dangerously so. Paxlovid contains ritonavir, a strong CYP3A4 inhibitor that slows the metabolism of verapamil, a calcium-channel blocker with a narrow therapeutic index. Taking the two together can push verapamil levels into the toxic range, causing dangerous hypotension and bradycardia. The npj Digital Medicine Comment (June 11, 2026) uses this exact case to argue that the learned intermediary doctrine — which long shielded drug manufacturers from failure-to-warn claims — does not apply when AI advises patients directly with no physician in the chain. That means AI developers' liability exposure is real and growing. The broader data is sobering: nearly three-quarters of ChatGPT's drug-related answers in the study were incomplete or wrong, and it fabricated nonexistent citations when asked for sources. Evaluators assessing risky chatbot responses to questions about the 50 most-prescribed US drugs found more than a fifth capable of causing severe harm or death if followed. Meanwhile KFF's 2026 poll found roughly one in three US adults consulted an AI chatbot for health information in the past year, and a 2024 survey found 21.5% used ChatGPT for health info — nearly a third of those changed their medications based on what it told them. An NEJM AI study found lay participants could not reliably distinguish low-accuracy AI responses from physician responses. The takeaway: never start, stop, or change a medication based on a chatbot's answer — drug interactions must be checked against a pharmacist or a formal interaction database. Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41746-026-02854-5
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