ChatGPT did not cure a dog’s cancer

When an Australian tech entrepreneur with no background in biology or medicine said ChatGPT helped save his dog from cancer, the story spread with the kind of validation Big Tech has long craved: proof that AI will revolutionize medicine and take on one of its deadliest diseases. The reality, as usual, is more complicated.

The version of the story that made the rounds online, first reported by The Australian, was relatively straightforward. In 2024, Sydney-based Paul Conyngham learned that his dog Rosie had cancer. Chemotherapy slowed the disease but failed to shrink the tumors. After vets said “nothing could be done” for the Staffordshire bull terrier-shar pei, Conyngham said “I took it upon myself to find a cure.”

Conyngham said he used ChatGPT to brainstorm treatment ideas. The chatbot surfaced immunotherapy as an option and pointed him toward experts at the University of New South Wales, who then genetically profiled Rosie’s cancer. He then used ChatGPT and Google’s protein structure AI model AlphaFold to help make sense of the results. With the help of UNSW professor Pall Thordarson, he pursued a personalized mRNA vaccine tailored to Rosie’s tumor mutations. Thordarson told The Australian he thinks it’s the first time such a treatment has been designed for a dog.