The relationship between physicians and AI has been rapidly developing as healthcare organizations work to solidify AI’s place in medicine and public perception of the technology continues to shift.
Here are five notes on the evolving relationship between physicians, their patients and AI:
1. The American Medical Association recently outlined a policy framework to address AI-generated deepfakes impersonating physicians. The policy includes seven key principles, including defining physician identity as a protected right and prohibiting deceptive medical impersonation without informed consent. It also calls for opt-in, revocable consent for use of a physician’s likeness and mandates clear labeling and transparency for AI-generated content.
2. OpenAI recently launched ChatGPT for Clinicians, a free AI tool designed specifically to support every day tasks associated with medical practice. The company’s new benchmark accompanying the tool — HealthBench Professional – claims its model outperforms human physicians on clinical tasks. The tool measures AI performance across three clinical areas: consultations, writing and documentation and medical research. It builds on the earlier HealthBench and uses physician-written conversations, multi-level physician scoring and targeted data filtering.
3. Public openness to AI in healthcare is declining even as more Americans turn to the technology to make medical decisions. The survey, conducted by SSRS on its Opinion Panel Omnibus platform, included a national sample of 1,007 adults from Jan. 16 to Jan. 20, 2026. Forty-two percent of respondents are open to AI being used as part of their care, down from 52% when the survey was first conducted in 2024. Belief in AI’s ability to improve efficiency in healthcare also dropped, from 64% to 55%.
At the same time, the survey found growing reliance on AI tools for personal health decisions. About 51% of adults reported using AI to make an important health decision without consulting a healthcare professional.
4. While AI-enabled scribes have produced modest decreases in time spent in EHRs and documentation time, they did not significantly cut down the amount of time spent in the EHR outside of work hours, according to a study published April 1 in JAMA.
5. More than four in five physicians are regularly using AI in their practices—a figure that has doubled since 2023, according to research published by AMA in March. Physicians reporting awareness or use of AI in their practice rose to 81% for 2026, compared with 38% in 2023.
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