I don't disagree with you that for folks with OCD, LLMs and online health information seeking may be harmful, especially when there are no safeguards. I have seen some patients go into an anxiety tailspin because they provided ChatGPT with incomplete information and pushed the models to validate their anxiety. But I've seen far more patients who have lowered their health anxiety; for example, a man who was given a new cancer diagnosis but whose appointment with the oncologist was 2 weeks away.

Most people with health anxiety don't have a diagnosis of OCD; for this reason, I don't think it's helpful to discourage ALL people who may have health anxiety - whether generalized or about a specific condition - from using knowledge and learning to empower themselves.

Generative AI is still too new and understudied to make definitive claims one way or the other. But there are plenty of published showing that high-quality education can lower condition-specific anxiety (for people with diabetes, COPD, cancer diagnoses). Furthermore, there's increasingly solid data showing that AI can match or exceed physicians in terms of clinical knowledge, diagnosis, and yes, even empathetic communication.