# ChatGPT as a Virtual Dietitian: Exploring Its Potential as a Tool for Improving Nutrition Knowledge
## 4 Discussion, Implications, and Limitations
Like in other health specialties, e.g., [40; 54; 68], it can assist in creating customized meal plans, dietary recommendations, and educational content for clients, allowing dietitians to focus on more complex and specialized aspects of their practice. As emphasized in the field of emergency medicine [71], ChatGPT serves as a dependable \"triage\" aide during critical medical situations, offering prompt, understandable guidance within a minute. This functionality stands as a valuable platform for both patients and healthcare practitioners as it potentially leads to time and resource savings while ensuring the provision of suitable and secure recommendations. Nevertheless, for dietitians and even other healthcare professionals, it is fundamental to use ChatGPT as a supplementary resource rather than a sole source of information. Expert judgment and critical evaluation should always be exercised to ensure the accuracy and appropriateness of the guidance and information provided, considering the unique needs and circumstances of everyone under their care. As warned by other scholars [72], a notable drawback lies in the potential for ChatGPT to disseminate inaccurate healthcare information or misleading content. This concern stems from the necessity for the model to distinguish between credible and unreliable sources of information [73]. The challenge of discerning the trustworthiness of sources presents a critical issue, as the model must possess the capacity to differentiate between credible, evidence-based healthcare knowledge and unverified or deceptive content. Addressing this challenge is paramount to ensure the responsible use of AI technologies in nutrition and healthcare in general. While ChatGPT exhibits promising potential in offering valuable insights and sharing nutrition knowledge, a valid argument can be made against its role as a substitute for the expertise of a registered dietitian, especially when confronted with intricate dietary requirements or medical conditions. Other experts in various health-related fields share a similar viewpoint [54; 67; 74; 75]. When we take a broader view of the current applications in medical practice, it is apparent that AI has already become an integral part of healthcare services, all the while not supplanting the role of medical professionals. For instance, the influence of AI in healthcare is discernible through its application in decision support systems designed to aid in the interpretation of medical imaging [22]. Thus, there is an ongoing challenge in the field of nutrition and healthcare in general, which is to strike the right balance between harnessing the advantages of AI technologies and preserving the critical role played by dietitians and human healthcare providers. From a technical standpoint, ChatGPT's inadequacy to fully replace experts in the field of nutrition becomes apparent when we consider the myriad elements integral to this domain. Examples include its potential for providing incorrect responses, the need for coordinated and personalized nutrition services, the value of hands-on demonstrations, the ability to conduct physical examinations, interpreting both verbal and non-verbal cues, addressing emotional and psychological aspects, offering real-time monitoring and feedback, integrating data from wearable devices, providing visual information, and dealing with ethical and privacy concerns. These facets lay emphasis on the nuanced expertise provided by human professionals and the distinct attributes that nutrition applications contribute to the healthcare landscape, which goes beyond the capabilities of AI-driven models like ChatGPT. This paper has several limitations that need to be acknowledged and could serve as key areas for future studies. Firstly, the limited existing research on ChatGPT in the context of nutrition poses a challenge as it restricts the pool of available references and precedents in this emerging field. The main emphasis of this paper was consequently directed towards the technical aspects of nutrition applications and ChatGPT.