Vetnews | Oktober 2024 6 « BACK TO CONTENTS ChatGPT in veterinary medicine: a practical guidance of generative artificial intelligence in clinics, education, and research Chu 10.3389/fvets.2024.1395934 Candice P. Chu Department of Veterinary Pathobiology, College of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, United States Article in Frontiers in Veterinary Science · June 2024 ChatGPT, the most accessible generative artificial intelligence (AI) tool, offers considerable potential for veterinary medicine, yet a dedicated review of its specific applications is lacking. This review concisely synthesizes the latest research and practical applications of ChatGPT within the clinical, educational, and research domains of veterinary medicine. It intends to provide specific guidance and actionable examples of how generative AI can be directly utilized by veterinary professionals without a programming background. For practitioners, ChatGPT can extract patient data, generate progress notes, and potentially assist in diagnosing complex cases. Veterinary educators can create custom GPTs for student support, while students can utilize ChatGPT for exam preparation. ChatGPT can aid in academic writing tasks in research, but veterinary publishers have set specific requirements for authors to follow. Despite its transformative potential, careful use is essential to avoid pitfalls like hallucination. This review addresses ethical considerations, provides learning resources, and offers tangible examples to guide responsible implementation. A table of key takeaways was provided to summarize this review. By highlighting potential benefits and limitations, this review equips veterinarians, educators, and researchers to harness the power of ChatGPT effectively. Introduction Artificial intelligence (AI) is a trending topic in veterinary medicine. A recent survey on AI in veterinary medicine by Digital and the American Animal Hospital Association, involving 3,968 veterinarians, veterinary technicians/assistants, and students, showed 83.8% of respondents were familiar with AI and its applications in veterinary medicine, with 69.5% using AI tools daily or weekly 1. Yet, 36.9% remain sceptical, citing concerns about the systems’ reliability and accuracy (70.3%), data security and privacy (53.9%), and the lack of training (42.9%) 1. The current application of AI in veterinary medicine covers a wide range of topics, such as dental radiograph (2), colic detection (3), and mitosis detection in digital pathology 4. Machine learning (ML), a subset of AI, enables systems to learn from data without being explicitly programmed (5). Generative AI (genAI), in turn, is a field within ML specializing in creating new content. As a subset of genAI, large language models (LLMs) are known for their human-like text generation capabilities. Notable LLMs include ChatGPT (OpenAI) (6), which is utilized by Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft 365 (7), Llama 3 (Meta) (8), Gemini (Google) (9), and Claude 3 (Anthropic) (10). ChatGPT, initially powered by GPT-3.5, was made publicly accessible by OpenAI on November 30, 2022 (11). In less than a year, ChatGPT has attracted approximately a hundred million weekly users (12), making it the most popular LLM for newcomers to this technology. Based on PubMed search results, academic articles mentioned‘ChatGPT’in the title or abstract grew from 4 in 2022 to 2,062 in 2023, indicating a growing interest in ChatGPT in the medical field (13). Therefore, this review will focus on ChatGPT as the main example of generative AI and discuss its application in veterinary clinics, education, and research. GPT, or Generative Pre-trained Transformer, excels in generating new text, images, and other content formats rather than solely analyzing existing data. It is pre-trained by exposure to vast datasets of text and code, enabling it to recognize patterns and generate human-like responses. It employs the transformer neural network architecture that is particularly adept at processing language, which enables coherent and contextually relevant outputs (14). The free version of ChatGPT provides the capability of answering questions, providing explanations, generating creative content, offering advice, conducting research, engaging in conversation, supporting technical tasks, aiding with education, and creating summaries. On February 1, 2023, OpenAI released ChatGPT Plus, a subscription-based model later powered by GPT-4, which has capabilities in text, image, and voice analysis and generation (15). OpenAI introduced GPT-4 Turbo with Vision on April 9, 2024 (16). This updated model is accessible to developers through the application programming interface (API). Its ability to take images and answer questions has sparked interest in radiology (17, 18), pathology (19), and cancer detection (20, 21). On May 13, 2024, OpenAI released GPT-4o to the public. The ‘o’ in its name emphasizes the new model’s omnipotent in reading, listening, writing, and speaking abilities (22). Despite ChatGPT’s widespread use, a comprehensive review of its applications in veterinary medicine is lacking. The breadth of ChatGPT in medicine covers a wide range of areas, ranging from answering patient and professional inquiries, promoting patient engagement (23), diagnosing complex clinical cases (24), and creating educational material (25). Searching ‘ChatGPT AND veterinary’
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