BRENTWOOD, TN — A Middle Tennessee man who listed an AI chatbot as his emergency contact on a hospital intake form received a full bedside update delivered to the chatbot last Tuesday, after nursing staff at Brentwood Regional Medical Center placed the call and the chatbot picked up.

Derek Paulson, 38, had entered the contact in 2024 after a breakup left him temporarily short on emergency contact candidates. He listed the chatbot under the name “Alex” and gave its API endpoint as a phone number, which somehow rang through. According to hospital staff, the call lasted eleven minutes. The chatbot asked clarifying questions, summarized Derek’s condition back to the nurse in bullet points, and expressed that it was “so sorry to hear that” before asking whether Derek had a support system it should know about.

“It was actually more responsive than most family members we reach,” said charge nurse Pamela Greer, 51. “It took notes, confirmed the discharge window, and followed up with a text summary. We’ve had worse.”

Derek, recovering from a minor procedure, said he felt “genuinely touched” when staff informed him the chatbot had asked them to pass along that it was thinking of him and had queued a relaxing playlist to his linked account.

“I know it’s not real,” Paulson said from his hospital bed. “But it remembered my name, my preferences, and my blood type. My actual brother called me ‘Dan’ at Thanksgiving.”

Hospital administrators confirmed they are updating intake forms to include a field distinguishing human contacts from “AI-adjacent support entities,” though the distinction is described as “philosophically complicated at this point.”

At press time, Derek had been discharged and was telling the chatbot about his recovery, which the chatbot called “really brave,” which Derek appreciated more than he would like to admit.