Who among us has not, in a moment of panic or curiosity, consulted the internet in search of solutions to a medical ailment?

Increasingly, people are turning to AI for health advice, and skincare is no exception. Purpose-built apps promise to identify that rash, while people are sending selfies to AI chatbots seeking “full skincare analysis” and personalised regimens of treatments. On Reddit forums, people post before and after shots of the results from their AI-recommended skin routines.

Given the significant cost of seeing a dermatologist – about $230 out of pocket in Australia, on average, it’s no wonder some are taking skincare into their own hands by using AI as a tool. But too often the advice these chatbots provide isn’t spot on.

AI ‘doesn’t have a brain’

“I can understand the urge to upload photos,” says Dr Michelle Wong, a cosmetic chemist and science educator who runs Lab Muffin Beauty Science. But she cites the sci-fi writer Ted Chiang, who once described the output of ChatGPT “as a blurry Jpeg of all the text on the web”.

“If you keep that in mind, I guess you can avoid the pitfalls,” says Wong, who has warned of AI slop worsening scientific misinformation. “Most of the time you don’t see what sources they’re using” – whether chatbots have pulled skincare information from user-generated forums, dermatology websites or ill-evidenced blogs.

In the last six months Wong has come across people who were told by chatbots to use multiple skin products with the same active ingredient, such as vitamin A. Others “upload their routine and ask for what order to use [products] in”, to be given a “weird order – like, it tells you to use cleanser........

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