14 ways to tell patients you're using AI

Your ambient scribe drafted today's notes. A language model wrote the first pass of half the portal replies. The after-hours phone line is answered by software with a pleasant voice and a human-sounding name. Odds are the patients on the other end of all three have no idea.

That gap is now measurable. In a Pew Research Center survey of 3,488 U.S. adults conducted in June, 72 percent said it is extremely or very important that a provider tell them when AI is used in their care. Nearly half weren't sure whether it had been, and 53 percent said they have little or no say in the matter. Legislators noticed before most practices did. Texas, California, Louisiana and Rhode Island now put disclosure duties directly on clinicians, and more states have bills moving.

Disclosure done well costs little: a sentence at the start of the visit, a line in the intake packet, a label on a message. Done badly or not at all, it hands patients a reason to distrust the tools that are saving your staff hours a week. Here are 14 places to start.