Evaluation of ChatGPT as a Counselling Tool for Italian-Speaking MASLD Patients: Assessment of Accuracy, Completeness and Comprehensibility

Background: Artificial intelligence (AI)-based chatbots have shown promise in providing counseling to patients with metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease (MASLD). While ChatGPT3.5 has demonstrated the ability to comprehensively answer MASLD-related questions in English, its accuracy remains suboptimal. Whether language influences these results is unclear. This study aims to assess ChatGPT's performance as a counseling tool for Italian MASLD patients. Methods: Thirteen Italian experts rated the accuracy, completeness and comprehensibility of ChatGPT3.5 in answering 15 MASLD-related questions in Italian using a six-point accuracy, three-point completeness and three-point comprehensibility Likert's scale. Results: Mean scores for accuracy, completeness and comprehensibility were 4.57 +/- 0.42, 2.14 +/- 0.31 and 2.91 +/- 0.07, respectively. The physical activity domain achieved the highest mean scores for accuracy and completeness, whereas the specialist referral domain achieved the lowest. Overall, Fleiss's coefficient of concordance for accuracy, completeness and comprehensibility across all 15 questions was 0.016, 0.075 and -0.010, respectively. Age and academic role of the evaluators did not influence the scores. The results were not significantly different from our previous study focusing on English. Conclusion: Language does not appear to affect ChatGPT's ability to provide comprehensible and complete counseling to MASLD patients, but accuracy remains suboptimal in certain domains.