Doctors can rest easy, with the knowledge that artificial intelligence hasn’t replaced them yet.

A new study suggests that humans prefer medical advice from real people over AI, even if the advice is exactly the same.

German researchers conducted two studies to determine if feelings about digital medical advice changed, depending on its perceived source.

Both studies presented over 1,000 participants with case reports that addressed four medical topics: smoking cessation, colonoscopy, agoraphobia, and reflux disease.

Each report included a question with an appropriate response, simulating a scenario that might play out in a chat interface online. Responses were generated using ChatGPT and evaluated for accuracy by a certified physician, and included supplemental information.

Some participants were told the responses came from a human doctor. Some were told they were generated by AI. Others were told the responses were generated by AI but reviewed by a human doctor. The responses were identical across all groups.

Still, participants found the content they believed to be human-generated more reliable and more empathetic compared with the responses labeled as AI-generated, or AI-generated and human-approved.

Participants were also less likely to follow digital medical advice when they believed AI was involved in its creation.

The results show that while health care systems look for ways to care for more patients amid resource shortages, a level of distrust remains.

For now, it looks like while AI might be taking the world by storm, many people aren’t yet ready to trust it with their health.