Woman says ChatGPT ‘saved her life’ by detecting hidden cancer that had gone unnoticed by doctors
When artificial intelligence is reported in the news, it tends to be stories about how these advancements in technology are trying to steal our jobs, are factually incorrect, or are destroying the planet due to the massive amounts of water required to keep their servers cool.
On the other side of the coin, there are more and more positive stories about AI and how it could genuinely be used to further the human race.
While we wouldn't necessarily recommend turning to ChatGPT when you're feeling unwell, one mother of two has credited AI with picking up on a concerning cancer diagnosis that traditional flesh-and-blood doctors had missed.
40-year-old Lauren Bannon started to feel unwell around February 2024 when she realized she was struggling to bend her fingers.
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Despite doctors allegedly thinking she had rheumatoid arthritis, tests kept coming back negative for the autoimmune disease.
Things got worse when she started experiencing severe stomach pains and lost 14 pounds in a month, with doctors then blaming acid reflux.
Desperate to get some answers, Bannon described her symptoms to ChatGPT, with OpenAI's chatbot suggesting she could have the rare Hashimoto's disease that was attacking her thyroid. Hashimoto's disease creates antibodies that mistakenly target the thyroid and can make it inflamed while also being underactive.
While doctors confirmed this when Bannon returned to them with a potential diagnosis, she was then shocked to learn she had two cancerous tumors in her neck. It took until October 2024 for her to be officially diagnosed with thyroid cancer.
Kennedy News and Media reports how Bannon couldn't believe that AI had picked up what doctors missed, saying: "I felt let down by doctors. It was almost like they were just trying to give out medication for anything to get you in and out the door.
"I needed to find out what was happening to me, I just felt so desperate. I just wasn't getting the answers I needed."
Having already used ChatGPT for her job as the owner of a marketing company, Bannon then turned to it when she wasn't satisfied with her doctor: "I started typing what mimics rheumatoid arthritis and it popped up saying, ‘You may have Hashimoto's disease, ask your doctor to check your thyroid peroxidase antibody (TPO) levels'."
She wasn't displaying symptoms like being tired, weight gain, and memory issues, adding that she would've likely taken the rheumatoid arthritis medicine prescribed to her if not for ChatGPT.
Even though doctors had written off Hashimoto's disease because there was no family history of it, Bannon recalled telling doctors, "Just amuse me."
Having finally gotten closer to the answers she needed, Bannon underwent an operation to remove her thyroid and lymph nodes from her neck in January 2025, while she'll now be monitored for the rest of her life to ensure the cancer doesn't return.
Bannon concluded: "The doctor said I was very lucky to have caught it so early. I know for sure that cancer would've spread without using ChatGPT.
"It saved my life. I just knew that something was wrong with me. I would've never discovered this without ChatGPT. All my tests were perfect."
Even though Elon Musk might be telling us to use Grok to diagnose illness, Bannon urged people to use ChatGPT 'with caution' and echoed concerns that we shouldn't be relying on AI to replace our doctors just yet.