Is it safe to use AI in a dental practice?

The honest answer is that “AI” covers three different things in a practice, and they carry three different levels of risk. Sort yours first, then decide what is safe.

Wording with no patient in it. Drafting the reply to “how much is a check-up”, the text that explains how fund claims work, the form letter. No patient information goes in, so the main risk is a wrong fact. You check the wording and put your own fees in. This is where most practices can start.

Anything that touches a patient. That means an AI scribe that listens to the appointment, a tool that summarises a record, or a chatbot that books by name. The Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency (Ahpra) says practitioners must apply human judgment to AI output and are responsible for checking the accuracy of records made with generative AI. It says they should inform patients about their use of AI, that they should obtain informed consent where AI needs personal patient data, and that they should be aware of whether patient data is used to train the model (Ahpra, Artificial intelligence in healthcare, page reviewed 22 August 2024, read 15 October 2026).

Patient details in a public chatbot. The Office of the Australian Information Commissioner recommends that organisations do not enter personal information, particularly sensitive information, into publicly available generative AI tools (OAIC, guidance on privacy and the use of commercially available AI products, published 21 October 2024, read 15 October 2026). A patient's details are exactly that kind of information. The simple rule is none: no names, no dates of birth, no notes.

This is Australian guidance. If your practice is in another country, your own dental regulator and privacy law decide what you must do, and they may differ. Read theirs before you use any tool that touches a patient. The questions to ask a seller are the same anywhere: where does the information go, is it used to train the model, and can I turn that off. Where your customers' information goes lists them.

A practical order: start with front-desk wording, keep a written rule for the team that no patient details go into a chatbot, and look at a scribe only once you have read your regulator's guidance and your insurer's position. Dental no-shows and recall follow-up show the wording-only jobs in practice.

A Three Fixes report is about the first jobs. For a dental practice it recommends first steps and the words to use, and each step is for the practice to assess against its own privacy obligations and its regulator, scribes included.