Privacy risks from medical AI tools are not shared equally

A News and Views article in Nature (656, 42-44, 2026) highlights that privacy risks from medical AI tools are not equally shared, citing a study by Knolle et al. in Nature 656, 192-198 (2026). The article discusses how certain groups face greater privacy vulnerabilities, referencing prior work on model inversion and membership inference attacks. It underscores the need for equitable privacy protections in medical AI.

- NEWS AND VIEWS Privacy risks from medical AI tools are not shared equally Access options Access Nature and 54 other Nature Portfolio journals Get Nature+, our best-value online-access subscription 27,99 € / 30 days cancel any time Subscribe to this journal Receive 52 print issues and online access 199,00 € per year only 3,83 € per issue Rent or buy this article Prices vary by article type from$1.95 to$39.95 Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout Nature 656 , 42-44 2026 doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-026-02288-9 References Knolle, M. A. et al. Nature 656 , 192–198 2026 .Feldman, V. & Chiyuan, Z. In Proc. 34 Int. Conf. Neural Inf. Process. Syst. eds Larochelle, H. et al. 2881–2891 Curran Associates, 2020 .Tonekaboni, S., Stempfle, L., Fallahpour, A., Gerych, W. & Ghassemi, M. In Adv. Neural Inf. Process. Syst. 39 eds Belgrave, D. et al. 10555–10580 2026 .Geiping, J., Bauermeister, H., Dröge, H. & Moeller, M. In Proc. 34 Int. Conf. Neural Inf. Process. Syst. eds Larochelle, H. et al. 16937–16947 Curran Associates, 2020 .Chen, M. et al. In Proc. 2021 ACM SIGSAC Conf. Comput. Commun. Secur . 896–911 ACM, 2021 .Shokri, R., Stronati, M., Song, C. & Shmatikov, V. In Proc. 2017 IEEE Symp. Secur. Priv. ed. O’Conner, L. 3–18 IEEE, 2017 .Nissenbaum, H. Wash. Law Rev. 79 , 119–157 2004 .Gichoya, J. W. et al. Lancet Digit. Health 4 , E406–E414 2022 .Abadi, M. et al. In Proc. 2016 ACM SIGSAC Conf. Comput. Commun. Secur. 308–318 ACM, 2016 .Suriyakumar, V. M., Papernot, N., Goldenberg, A. & Ghassemi, M. In Proc. 2021 ACM Conf. Fairness Account. Transpar. 723–734 ACM, 2021 . Competing Interests The authors declare no competing interests.