When does ChatGPT refer someone to a plastic surgeon?
View abstract on PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.Artificial intelligence (AI) tools like ChatGPT consistently highlight plastic surgery
Area Of Science
- Healthcare Technology
- Medical Education
- Artificial Intelligence in Medicine
Background
- Artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly evolving, impacting healthcare education and patient information seeking.
- Understanding how AI tools, such as large language models (LLMs), represent medical specialties is crucial for clinicians and patients.
- ChatGPT is a prominent AI chatbot increasingly used for health information and clinical decision support.
Purpose Of The Study
- To assess the frequency and prominence of plastic surgery mentions in AI-generated responses.
- To identify potential biases in AI training data regarding plastic surgery's role.
- To understand the impact of AI on specialty visibility and future referral patterns.
Main Methods
- Standardized prompts were submitted to ChatGPT-4 regarding 35 plastic surgery conditions and 24 control conditions.
- Each prompt was submitted three times, totaling 177 queries.
- The study measured the frequency of plastic surgery mentions and their ranking among other specialties.
Main Results
- Plastic surgery was mentioned in 100% of relevant conditions queried.
- Plastic surgery was most frequently listed as the primary specialty.
- No mentions of plastic surgery were found in control condition queries.
Conclusions
- ChatGPT consistently and prominently features plastic surgery in relevant health information.
- AI models demonstrate strong visibility for plastic surgery within their knowledge base.
- These findings underscore the importance of AI in shaping perceptions of medical specialties.

