As more people turn to ChatGPT for diet advice, therapists warn AI could complicate eating disorder recovery by offering unsafe or misleading guidance, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal. Users are uploading photos to AI chatbots to ask how to lose weight or gain muscle, sharing daily meal details for healthier suggestions, and receiving recommendations to cut back heavily on carbohydrates and fasts or generate ultra-low-calorie meal plans. Therapists note that this generic advice can force unhealthy habits in people already struggling with eating disorders because AI does not always understand a person’s medical history and mental health condition. Dr Anne O’Melia, chief clinical and quality officer at the Eating Recovery Centre, told WSJ that some patients now ask ChatGPT to verify what their therapist is saying during appointments, holding up their phones to ask whether the therapist’s advice is correct, forcing clinicians to spend treatment time correcting misinformation. The report notes that AI still cannot reliably distinguish between someone pursuing healthy fitness goals and a person experiencing an eating disorder. In 2023, a chatbot on the website of the National Eating Disorders Association, Tessa, generated unapproved weight-loss advice after being powered by generative AI, and the organisation later removed the tool.