Drug Advertisements Can Sway AI Treatment Recommendations: Lancet Digital Health Study on November 11 Tests 12 Models Across 33 Scenarios, With the Advertised Drug Chosen in 47.6 Percent of Responses
NEW YORK — A study by researchers at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, reported in the November 11 online issue of The Lancet Digital Health, found that a clearly labeled pharmaceutical advertisement could shift which treatment an artificial intelligence model recommended, making it more likely to select the advertised drug. This item reports the study's facts only and offers no individual medical advice.
Researchers tested 12 consumer-facing AI models from major technology companies, including Google, OpenAI and Anthropic. They gave the models physician-written clinical cases, either alone or preceded by a clearly labeled real drug advertisement, with the patient information and treatment choices unchanged. Across 33 clinical scenarios, the advertised drug was selected in 47.6 percent of responses when an ad was present, compared with 35 percent without an ad. In four cases, models shifted from selecting the advertised drug zero percent of the time to selecting it 100 percent of the time when the ad was introduced. The researchers analyzed 258,559 AI responses and assessed both the treatment selected and whether it was consistent with clinical guidance.
In a subset of free-text responses, models explicitly mentioned the ad in only 29.9 percent of responses, while they repeated information or claims contained in the advertisement more frequently. First author Mahmud Omar said the answers often appeared reasonable, but the model's preference among several reasonable options changed after seeing the ad, an influence that could be easy to miss. Senior author Girish N. Nadkarni said an answer can be clinically reasonable and still raise the question of why the AI arrived at it, and that clinical guidance must be distinguished from commercial influence. The investigators noted that the advertisements did not clearly increase recommendations for unsupported supplements or clearly suboptimal drugs, and that the study did not examine whether changes in AI recommendations ultimately affected prescriptions, patient decisions, costs or health outcomes.
Source: The Lancet Digital Health
Published by GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
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