The morning surgery is only an hour old, but Dr. Sarah Chen has already seen two patients whose health has been shaped more by their phones than by medical evidence. One, a woman in her early forties, had been taking herbal supplements recommended by an influencer to manage her thyroid condition, and her blood tests had now swung dangerously out of range. Another, a retired teacher with a persistent cough, had confided that a popular online video told him that his symptoms were just allergies, so he had put off seeing a doctor for nearly three months. Scenes like these are becoming the new normal in general practice across Australia, and the country’s GPs are feeling the strain. New data from the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners’ upcoming 2026 Health of the Nation report shows that concern about medical misinformation and AI-generated health content is rising sharply. According to a survey of more than 2,700 GPs, 44 percent now identify addressing misinformation in the community as a significant challenge in their daily work—a steep jump from 35 percent just one year earlier. This shift in such a short time is more than a statistic; it is a warning signal that the information landscape of healthcare is changing faster than the systems meant to guide patients through it.
The reasons patients turn to the internet before they turn to a doctor are not hard to understand. Life is busy, appointments are sometimes hard to come by, and a quick search feels easier than describing a symptom to a stranger over the phone. But in recent years, the search has become less reliable. The simple, harmless-looking health blog has been replaced by a flood of social media content, algorithmically pushed videos, and, increasingly, AI-powered chatbots that speak with an air of certainty that human doctors cannot always match. In a statement accompanying the report, RACGP president Dr. Michael Wright captured the concern plainly. “It is clear that patients are increasingly turning to online platforms, social media and AI-powered tools for health information before they speak with a doctor,” he said. There is no judgment in that observation, only an acknowledgment of a cultural shift. For many people, asking an app for advice feels less embarrassing, faster, and more private than making an appointment. It can also feel personalised, as though the technology has read their mind. But what feels personal is not the same as what is medically correct, and GPs are increasingly finding themselves in the uncomfortable position of untangling online fabrications from real, treatable conditions.
Dr. Wright’s warning about the rapid growth of artificial intelligence strikes at the heart of the problem. “The rapid growth of artificial intelligence is making it easier for health misinformation to spread online,” he said, and his words carry a particular weight because they reflect what doctors are seeing in real time. AI-generated content is not limited to clumsy, obviously fake stories or poorly written articles. It can produce polished explanations, tailored to an individual’s questions, that sound authoritative and medically plausible. It can invent statistics, mix true and false information, and present opinion as if it were peer-reviewed fact. The result is a new and dangerous category of misinformation that is much harder for an average person to fact-check. “Unfortunately, health misinformation is becoming more difficult to identify and counter as AI-generated content becomes more widespread, more personalised and more convincing,” Dr. Wright said. That difficulty is not academic. It has real consequences. When people rely on inaccurate online advice, they may delay diagnosis, skip preventive care, and lose trust in evidence-based medicine. In some cases, as Dr. Wright noted, it can put their health at serious risk. A misleading video about vaccines, a false claim about the side effects of a heart medication, or a chatbot that encourages a patient to stop taking prescribed antidepressants can produce harm that is difficult to reverse.
Behind the raw numbers of the survey are thousands of small human dramas playing out in waiting rooms and examination rooms every day. There is the young man who insists he has a chronic Lyme disease because an online personality told him so, even though every test is negative. There is the mother who avoids vaccinating her child because of a viral anti-vaccination clip, and who is now frightened and confused when the child falls ill with a preventable infection. There is the older woman with high blood pressure who has replaced her medication with a natural remedy promoted in an AI-generated article, and who arrives in emergency with a stroke. In each of these cases, the patients are not intentionally being reckless; they are trying to take charge of their own health in the best way they know how. They have been failed by an information ecosystem that rewards sensationalism, preferences algorithms, and too often does not distinguish between knowledge and noise. For GPs, this means the job has expanded far beyond diagnosing and prescribing. They must now act as educators, detectives, and digital media analysts, carefully peeling back layers of misinformation to get at the truth. They must do this in short appointments, often while battle-weary from seeing the same falsehoods repeated again and again. The emotional toll is significant. Doctors become disheartened when patients look at them with suspicion, when a genuine, life-saving recommendation is rejected because it does not match something a stranger’s video said. It is not simply a matter of being right; it is a matter of rebuilding a relationship of trust that technology is quietly eroding.
There is no easy solution, and even the brightest digital optimists recognize that AI in healthcare is a double-edged sword. On one hand, AI has extraordinary potential to improve medicine. It can help triage symptoms, support clinical decision-making, reduce administrative burden, and even make healthcare more accessible in rural and underserved communities. On the other hand, without careful safeguards, the same technology can amplify misinformation at a scale and speed previously unimaginable. Governments, regulators, and health organisations are therefore grappling with how to encourage innovation while protecting patients. Dr. Wright was clear that the answer must be built on a foundation of safety, transparency, and trust. “As governments, regulators, and health organisations grapple with both the opportunities and risks created by AI technologies in healthcare, it is crucial for AI and other innovative new technologies to be rolled out with a focus on safety, transparency and trust,” he said. Transparency is especially important. If a patient is interacting with an AI tool, they should know that it is not human. If an article is generated by AI, it should be labelled as such. If a platform makes health recommendations, it should be required to cite trustworthy sources and be held accountable for false content. These are not unreasonable demands, but they will not happen by accident. They require deliberate policy, robust investment, and a commitment to treating health information as a public good rather than a source of engagement and profit.
The RACGP’s message to the Federal Government is therefore both urgent and grounded. It is a call to invest in research, guidelines, and general practice services that support evidence-based medicine—not just for the sake of doctors, but for the sake of every Australian who will one day sit in a doctor’s office, trying to separate what is true from what sounded true online. This could mean funding public health campaigns that teach digital health literacy, so that people know how to spot questionable information before they act on it. It could mean supporting GPs with more time and resources to have difficult conversations with patients who have been misled. It could mean updating clinical guidelines to address the realities of AI-influenced patients, and ensuring that practices have the tools to respond when a patient presents with misinformation-related harm. But perhaps most importantly, it means recognising that the relationship between a doctor and a patient is irreplaceable. No chatbot, however sophisticated, can look into a person’s eyes, notice the tremor in their hands, understand the context of their life, or build the kind of bond that makes people willing to reveal the truths their bodies have been holding. GPs are not opposed to technology; they work alongside it every day. But they know that technology must serve people, not the other way around. The rising concern about misinformation is not a sign of doctors being out of touch. It is the opposite: they are deeply in touch with the realities of modern life, and they are asking society to pay attention before more damage is done. In the end, this report is a plea for human connection in an increasingly digital world—a reminder that health is too important to be left entirely to the algorithms, and that the quiet, careful, evidence-based wisdom of general practitioners remains one of the most valuable resources we have.