AI and Aesthetic Clinics: Biased Recommendations

Unreliable AI Recommendations for Aesthetic Clinics

A study published in June 2026 highlights a major issue with AI recommendations for aesthetic clinics in France: 97% of the sources used are not independent. The rankings generated by these AIs primarily rely on the self-promotion of the establishments, turning online visibility into a misleading indicator of medical quality. For patients, it is essential to view these recommendations as advertising rather than reliable medical opinions.

The AI Visibility Observatory conducted an in-depth analysis of 6,438 sources cited by AIs such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and Perplexity. The results are unequivocal: these AIs favor establishments with a strong online presence. In fact, 77% of the sources come from the clinics' own websites, 19% from directories and commercial aggregators, and only 2.6% of the sources are truly independent.

The Dominance of the Clinique des Champs-Élysées

The Clinique des Champs-Élysées stands out with its overwhelming presence in the results: it accounts for 7.3% of national mentions. The mechanism is simple: the clinic positions itself as a reference on its own site, the AI takes note, and then recommends it as the best. When asked by AIs what the "best aesthetic surgery clinic in France" is, the Clinique des Champs-Élysées is mentioned 74 times across the four AIs, compared to only 27 mentions for the Clinique du Grand Paris, which comes in second.

Issues of Diversity and Location

The study also revealed geographical biases and a lack of diversity in the sources. Among the 12 metropolitan areas analyzed, local leaders emerge, but even when asking AIs about provincial cities, they tend to recommend Parisian establishments. Clinics in the capital represent 3.8% of the establishments cited in regional responses.

AI search engines do not respond uniformly to similar questions. For example, ChatGPT mentions 197 distinct establishments, Claude cites 214 but relies more on aggregators, Perplexity mentions 180 with a strong presence of social media, while Gemini only cites 33 distinct establishments.

Conclusion

For patients, the lesson is clear: it is better to treat AI recommendations as advertising rather than medical opinions. The study emphasizes that improving one's website and listings is often enough to rise in AI responses, highlighting a fundamental problem: the lack of independent sources on the subject. AIs often base their recommendations on what they find, which is essentially advertising.