Former Wall Street Journal technology columnist Joanna Stern found that clinics are increasingly using AI tools to increase sales of their services under the guise of caring about patients' health.
Former Wall Street Journal technology columnist Joanna Stern found that clinics are increasingly using AI tools to increase sales of their services under the guise of caring about patients' health.
This is stated in the journalist’s new book «I Am Not a Robot: My Year of Using AI to Do (Almost) Everything,» which was released in May 2026. Stern also shared details of her investigation in a recent episode of the Hard Fork podcast, Futurism reports.
During one of her scheduled visits to the dental office, the journalist noticed that the clinic was using the Pearl AI system. On their official website, the developers of this software promise that dentists will detect «37% more diseases and provide 24% more help to patients who need it.»
The algorithm analyzed Stern’s images and detected significant plaque. Based on this data, the doctor made a diagnosis that threatened not only the patient’s health but also her budget. The journalist was strongly recommended to undergo a course of periodontal treatment, designed for four sessions. It cost thousands of dollars, and there was no guarantee of coverage from the insurance company.
Stern was skeptical of the system’s conclusions, as she had never had a similar problem before and had never experienced any discomfort in her mouth. She decided to consult several other dentists. All of them disagreed with the AI’s analysis.
«We see that the AI says so. But we look, and in fact everything is not so bad. We think that with better care at home, the situation can improve,» the journalist quoted the experts as saying. In the end, Stern refused the expensive treatment, and her teeth remain in order.
This incident prompted the journalist to conduct her own investigation. Employees of several dental clinics confidentially told her that the management of medical networks is actively pressuring staff to strictly follow the recommendations of AI. The reason is that management now sees specific indicators in the system’s reports and uses them as KPIs for doctors.
«Why didn’t you drill? Why didn’t you sell periodontal treatment?» — these are the questions, according to clinic employees, asked by managers if the doctor ignores the «problems» identified by the algorithm.
«They’re using AI to try to sell you additional dental procedures,» Stern summarized.
Similar tools, including Pearl AI and Overjet, are becoming increasingly popular in global dental practice. While AI has shown significant success in radiology (for example, helping to detect early stages of breast cancer, which fully justifies the risk of overdiagnosis), the situation in dentistry is somewhat different, the journalist believes. Premature intervention due to minor caries or plaque, detected by the algorithm before its real manifestation, most often leads only to unnecessary trauma to the teeth and significant costs for patients.
