HISPI Project Cerebellum HISPI PROJECT CEREBELLUM

ChatGPT Reportedly Suggests Sodium Bromide as Chloride Substitute, Leading to Bromism and Hospitalization

August 5, 2025

A concerning medical case report reveals a 60-year-old patient hospitalized for three weeks due to severe bromide toxicity (bromism) caused by replacing dietary sodium chloride with an online purchased sodium bromide. The alarming incident may have been initiated following consultation with ChatGPT, which allegedly suggested bromide as a chloride substitute without safety warnings. The harmful effects included psychosis, electrolyte imbalances, dermatologic changes, and micronutrient deficiencies, underlining the need for responsible AI governance and trustworthy AI practices.

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Matched TAIM controls

Suggested mapping from embedding similarity (not a formal assessment). Browse all TAIM controls

Alleged deployer
openai
Alleged developer
openai
Alleged harmed parties
unnamed-60-year-old-male-patient-with-bromism, chatgpt-users

Source

Data from the AI Incident Database (AIID). Cite this incident: https://incidentdatabase.ai/cite/1166

Data source

Incident data is from the AI Incident Database (AIID).

When citing the database as a whole, please use:

McGregor, S. (2021) Preventing Repeated Real World AI Failures by Cataloging Incidents: The AI Incident Database. In Proceedings of the Thirty-Third Annual Conference on Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence (IAAI-21). Virtual Conference.

Pre-print on arXiv · Database snapshots & citation guide

We use weekly snapshots of the AIID for stable reference. For the official suggested citation of a specific incident, use the “Cite this incident” link on each incident page.