10/15/2026
I saw an ad on Facebook that made me cringe.
It shows two text messages to a dental patient. The “boring” one says: You have unscheduled treatment, call us to book. Result: ignored.
The “smart” AI one says, roughly: Hi Susan, you mentioned wanting to run the numbers past your husband before deciding… Result: booked!
The ad’s punchline is “Same patient. One was in the room.”
That’s the problem.
That AI was listening to Susan’s private conversation with her dentist about her family budget and her marriage. Then it remembered it and used it to close a sale. Marketing calls that “personalization.” We call it “the walls have ears, and the ears have a monthly subscription.”
So here’s what we do at our office instead, and why:
Talking to parents: I (aka Dr Richman), Dr Akabike, and our ALL HUMAN team talks to you. Our reminder texts are boring on purpose. Your child’s health information shouldn’t be raw material for a sales script. If a text from a dental office ever sounds like it was eavesdropping on your appointment, it wasn’t us.
Reviewing treatment plans and unscheduled treatment: Our team does this. They know when a family is waiting until after soccer season, or after the insurance resets, or until Grandma is in town to help. No algorithm needs to “nudge” you. If we ever forget and remind you earlier than you wanted to schedule, that’s just us being proactive.
Reading X-rays: Your child’s radiographs are read by a pediatric dental specialist, not a robot. The doctors look at them with our own eyes and years of training and experience, and the treatment plan is based on clinical judgment. In one study, dentists using AI help found more early cavities, but they also flagged cavities on about 1 in 7 healthy tooth surfaces, compared with about 1 in 27 without AI. For a kid, a false alarm can mean a filling, a shot, and a dental visit nobody needed.
Privacy: Healthcare data breaches affected tens of millions of Americans in 2025 alone. Every new system that “listens,” stores, and analyzes your child’s records is one more door to lock. Dino Kid’s Dentistry takes personal information and our responsibility to you very seriously.
To be clear, I am not anti-technology. Anything that can make me look like I am 10 years younger and just had a makeover is ok by me! Dentistry has come a long way with technology and perhaps in the future there will be a place for AI. AI has amazing potential, and I’m genuinely excited to see where it goes. Medicine is already routinely using AI scribes. We are not yet there in dentistry.
Regardless, in healthcare, your privacy and your right to have a specialist, not a robot, review your child’s X-rays and plan treatment outweigh the convenience these companies are selling.
We’ll keep sending boring texts. And for now, I'll just use AI to make goofy pictures!
~Dr Richman
