You could be visiting a poor doctor because AI is filling the web with fake online reviews
If you’ve ever picked a doctor based on online reviews, a new study from Simon Fraser University has some bad news for you.
Apparently, fake clinician reviews generated without using AI read more believable than genuine ones.
So what exactly did this study find?
Researchers reviewed 35,000 physician and dentist reviews collected in India (between 2015 and 2017), including doctors with specialties ranging from family medicine to dermatology. Within that sample, as many as 8,313 reviews were fake. In other words, nearly one in every four reviews wasn’t drafted by an actual patient.
It was either the healthcare providers or the clinic staff curating them. A closer look at a smaller sample of 5,000 reviews revealed the real problem. The fake reviews ran longer than the genuine ones, as they included far more details about symptoms, diagnoses, medications, and treatment.
They also scored higher on trustworthiness and got more upvotes than the real ones. Lead author Aishwarya Deep Shukla explains that real patients rarely want to narrate their own medical history or diagnosis details on a public platform. Fake reviews, by contrast, lack this hesitation.
What can you actually do about it?
While the bad practice didn’t involve generative AI when the data was collected, easy access to chatbots in 2026 is making the situation worse. The same tools that help genuine patients write authentic reviews are also helping bad actors generate them at scale.
The fixes devised by Shukla are simple. Tying reviews to confirmed appointments, offering authenticated-but-anonymous review options, and pushing platforms toward stronger moderation could help curb the spread of fake or AI-generated reviews.
For anyone searching for a new provider right now, here are a few habits that could help. First, try to read as many reviews as possible without focusing on one story. If most of them are of the exact same length and contain the same phrasing or structure, they’re probably not genuine, unless the provider asks their patients to share reviews in a specific format.
Shukla also recommends staying skeptical of reviews that automatically share unusually personal medical details, and not writing off a provider with few or no reviews, since most satisfied patients never bother leaving one. Finally, you should weigh reviews alongside credentials, referrals, and your own direct impressions. Talking to someone who has already been to the facility could also help.
