Social Media Attention, Risk Perception, and Generative AI-Based Health Information Seeking: A Multigroup Comparison Across Varying Levels of Machine Heuristics

The increasing adoption of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) is reshaping how individuals seek health information. However, its use in health information seeking (HIS) raises concerns about AI hallucination risks (i.e., inaccurate or fabricated outputs) and privacy risks related to personal data misuse. Despite these concerns, little is known about how such risk perceptions are formed or how they relate to users’ attitudes and continued use intentions. Drawing on the social amplification of risk framework and the concept of machine heuristics, we conducted an online survey of 1,038 Chinese users who had used GenAI for HIS. Results showed that greater attention to content on GenAI-based HIS from social media was associated with lower perceived hallucination and privacy risks. Perceived hallucination risks, but not privacy risks, were negatively associated with attitudes toward GenAI and continued use intentions. Multigroup analyses revealed that machine heuristics moderated the relationships between social media attention, perceived hallucination risks, and attitudes. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.