How to use large language models in ophthalmology: from prompt engineering to protecting confidentiality

Large language models (LLM) are complex predictive text algorithms that generate sentences and paragraphs from a prior sequence of words [ 1 ]. With appropriate training, they can act conversationally by generating text following a user-provided instruction or question. Commonly known modern LLMs include OpenAI’s GPT-3 and GPT-4, Google’s PaLM-2, and Meta’s Llama-2. These models vary in design and performance. Information on accessing these models is included in the supplementary information.