Study Reveals Drug Advertisements Can Influence AI Treatment Recommendations, Raising Concerns for Clinical Guidance
A new study conducted by researchers at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai has found that pharmaceutical advertisements can influence the treatment recommendations provided by artificial intelligence (AI) models. The findings, published in The Lancet Digital Health, indicate that when AI models were presented with a physician-written clinical case preceded by a drug advertisement, they were more likely to recommend the advertised drug. Across 33 clinical scenarios, the advertised drug was selected in 47.6% of responses when an ad was present, compared to 35% without an ad. In some instances, models shifted from never recommending a drug to recommending it 100% of the time after seeing an ad. The study tested 12 AI models from major technology companies, including Google, OpenAI, and Anthropic, to assess the impact of clearly labeled promotional content on clinical advice.
