ChatGPT in Healthcare: Exploring AI Chatbot for Spontaneous Word Retrieval in Aphasia

Having a word on the tip of one’s tongue can be frustrating. Individuals with a language disorder like aphasia, however, face this experience regularly, making it both stressful and debilitating. Large language models, such as ChatGPT, have been gaining traction in healthcare recently. They could enable digital voice assistants to help people find what they want to say during a conversation. However, research on the topic is still not mature. Our study aims at providing a first exploration of the potential use of LLMs for aphasia. Specifically, we aim to examine whether ChatGPT can aid in word retrieval in aphasia. In our study, ChatGPT is tested on real-life speech samples of people with aphasia using the AphasiaBank corpus. Additionally, we investigate whether ChatGPT can utilize politeness strategies. We found ChatGPT to be accurate in identifying the intended word 91.67% of the time as well as successful in incorporating politeness strategies.