ChatGPT has become the Swiss Army knife of the internet. Need a grocery list? Done. Want help planning a weekend trip? Easy. Looking for gift ideas? It’ll spit out twenty options in seconds.
But here’s the thing: just because ChatGPT can answer almost anything doesn’t mean it should. The chatbot is notorious for hallucinating facts, serving up outdated information, and confidently delivering answers that are flat-out wrong. When you’re generating a silly poem or brainstorming dinner ideas, that’s fine. When you’re dealing with your health, money, or legal rights? That’s a whole different story.
So let’s talk about where ChatGPT absolutely should not be your go-to source, no matter how convenient it seems.
Don’t Let It Play Doctor
I’ll admit it. I’ve typed my symptoms into ChatGPT out of pure curiosity. The results? Terrifying. A headache became a potential brain tumor. A cough turned into pneumonia or worse. I even entered information about a lump on my chest, and ChatGPT helpfully suggested cancer as a possibility. Spoiler: it was a lipoma, a harmless fatty deposit that one in every 1,000 people gets. My actual doctor told me that after an examination, something ChatGPT can’t do from behind a screen.
Look, there are some decent uses for AI in healthcare prep. You can draft questions for your next appointment, break down confusing medical jargon, or organize a symptom timeline. That’s helpful. But diagnosing yourself? Absolutely not. ChatGPT can’t order labs, read your vitals, or carry malpractice insurance. It’s a Technology tool, not a licensed physician.
Mental Health Crises Need Real Humans
ChatGPT can offer grounding techniques and generic coping advice, sure. Some people even use it as a makeshift therapist. CNET’s Corin Cesaric found it mildly helpful for processing grief, though she kept its limitations firmly in mind. But here’s what I know as someone with a very real, very human therapist: ChatGPT is a pale imitation at best and dangerously inadequate at worst.
It has no lived experience. It can’t read your body language or pick up on tone. It has zero capacity for genuine empathy, only the ability to simulate it. A licensed therapist operates under legal mandates and professional codes designed to protect you. ChatGPT doesn’t. Its advice can miss critical red flags or unintentionally reinforce harmful biases baked into its training data.
If you or someone you love is in crisis, dial 988 in the US or your local hotline. Leave the deep, messy, human work to an actual human trained to handle it.
Emergencies Require Immediate Action, Not Prompts
If your carbon monoxide alarm starts beeping, please do not open ChatGPT to ask if you’re in danger. Get outside first. Ask questions later.
Large language models can’t smell gas, detect smoke, or dispatch emergency crews. Every second you spend typing is a second you’re not evacuating or calling 911. ChatGPT only knows what you tell it, and in a crisis, that’s often too little, too late. Treat your chatbot as a post-incident explainer, never a first responder.
Your Finances Deserve a Real Expert
ChatGPT can explain what an ETF is or define compound interest. But it doesn’t know your debt-to-income ratio, state tax bracket, filing status, deductions, retirement goals, or risk appetite. Its training data might not include the latest tax year or recent rate hikes, which means its guidance could be stale the moment you hit enter.
I have friends who dump their 1099 totals into ChatGPT for a DIY tax return. Bad idea. A CPA can catch a hidden deduction worth hundreds or flag a mistake that could cost you thousands. When real money, IRS penalties, and filing deadlines are on the line, call a professional. Also, anything you share with ChatGPT, including your Social Security number, income, and bank routing info, could become part of its training data. Think twice before handing over that information.
Keep Sensitive Information Off the Platform
As a tech journalist, I see embargoed press releases every day. I’ve never once thought about tossing one into ChatGPT for a summary. Why? Because the moment I do, that text leaves my control and lands on a third-party server outside my nondisclosure agreement.
The same risk applies to client contracts, medical charts, or anything covered by HIPAA, GDPR, or trade-secret law. That includes your taxes, birth certificate, driver’s license, and passport. Once sensitive info is in the prompt window, you can’t guarantee where it’s stored, who reviews it internally, or whether it trains future models. ChatGPT isn’t immune to hackers either. If you wouldn’t paste it into a public Slack channel, don’t paste it into ChatGPT.
Academic Integrity Still Matters
I cheated on a high school exam once. I used my first-gen iPod Touch to sneak a peek at calculus equations I couldn’t memorize. Not proud of it. But with AI, the scale of modern cheating makes that look quaint.
Turnitin and similar detectors are getting better every semester. Professors can spot “ChatGPT voice” from a mile away. Suspension, expulsion, and getting your license revoked are real risks. Use ChatGPT as a study buddy, not a ghostwriter. And honestly, you’re just cheating yourself out of an education if you let it do the work for you.
Real-Time Data Needs Real-Time Sources
Since OpenAI rolled out ChatGPT Search in late 2024 and opened it to everyone in February 2025, the chatbot can now fetch fresh web pages, stock quotes, gas prices, and sports scores with clickable citations. That’s a step forward.
But it won’t stream continual updates on its own. Every refresh needs a new prompt. When speed is critical, live data feeds, official press releases, news sites, push alerts, and streaming coverage are still your best bet.
Sports Betting Is Already Risky Enough
I once hit a three-way parlay during the NCAA men’s basketball championship with ChatGPT’s help, but I would never recommend it. I’ve seen the chatbot hallucinate player stats, misreport injuries, and get win-loss records wrong. I only cashed out because I double-checked every claim against real-time odds, and even then, I got lucky.
ChatGPT can’t predict tomorrow’s box score. Don’t rely on it to secure a win.
Legal Documents Need Legal Professionals
ChatGPT is great for breaking down basic legal concepts. Want to understand a revocable living trust? Go ahead and ask. But the moment you ask it to draft actual legal text, you’re taking a massive risk.
Estate and family law rules vary by state and sometimes even by county. Skipping a witness signature or omitting a notarization clause can get your whole document tossed in court. Let ChatGPT help you build a checklist of questions for your lawyer, then pay that lawyer to turn it into something legally sound.
Art Should Come From Humans
This one’s subjective, but I’m putting it out there anyway. I don’t believe AI should be used to create art that you then pass off as your own. I use ChatGPT for brainstorming ideas and refining headlines, but that’s supplementation, not substitution.
By all means, use the tool. Just don’t use it to generate art and claim it as yours. It feels dishonest, lazy, and frankly kind of gross.
ChatGPT is a powerful assistant, but it’s not a replacement for doctors, therapists, lawyers, accountants, or emergency responders. It’s a tool with real limits, and pretending otherwise can lead to consequences far worse than a bad poem or a returned gift.
