The World Health Organization (WHO) recently introduced Sarah, a Smart AI Resource Assistant for Health. Developed by Soul Machines in New Zealand, Sarah is an AI-powered chatbot that offers health-related information in eight languages, covering topics such as healthy eating, mental health, cancer, heart disease, and diabetes. Sarah utilizes facial recognition technology to provide more empathetic responses and has previously been used to combat misinformation during the Covid-19 pandemic. WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus sees Sarah as a glimpse into how AI could improve access to health information in a more interactive way, and encourages the research community to explore its potential in narrowing health information inequities. However, Bloomberg reports that Sarah may have made some mistakes. While WHO claims that the AI bot has been trained with the latest information from the agency and its trusted partners, it does not provide up-to-date information on U. S. -based medical advisories and news events.

For instance, when asked about the approval of the drug Lecanemab for Alzheimer's by the U. S. Food and Drug Administration, Sarah incorrectly stated that the drug was still in clinical trials. In reality, the FDA approved the drug in 2023. Additionally, Sarah was unable to provide details about a WHO report on hepatitis deaths until prompted to check the agency's website for updated statistics. The WHO has yet to comment on these issues. On the landing page for Sarah, the agency acknowledges that the chatbot's answers may not always be accurate due to their reliance on patterns and probabilities in the available data.