Experiments assess consumer perceptions of generative artificial intelligence versus human responses in healthcare, indicating the importance of transparency.
This paper explores the emerging use of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) in customer service, focusing on responding to online reviews in the healthcare industry. We use real-world consumer reviews and experiments to investigate differences between GenAI- and human-generated responses to reviews, and to assess how they affect consumer perceptions. Importantly, consumers are generally unable to distinguish responses generated by GenAI from human responses. However, transparency about GenAI use significantly alters consumer perceptions, often negatively, but this negative effect varies depending on the source of disclosure and consumers’ subjective knowledge about GenAI. We discuss the implications for consumer privacy, welfare, and public policy, emphasizing the need for transparent GenAI use in customer service, especially within sensitive sectors like healthcare.
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Mousavi et al. (2025) studied this question.
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