AI and aesthetics
Artificial intelligence has moved very quickly from something that sounded futuristic to something many of us now use almost every day.
For most aesthetic clinic owners, the introduction to AI has probably been through tools such as ChatGPT: writing a social media post, producing an email, generating ideas for a blog or perhaps helping to create patient information.
But I think we are now reaching a point where we need to look at AI rather differently.
The real opportunity is not simply using AI to create more content. It is understanding where artificial intelligence can improve the way an aesthetic business thinks, communicates, analyses information and operates – while recognising where human judgement, clinical responsibility and common sense remain essential.
I have been exploring this subject extensively through my Aesthetics AI newsletter and through conversations with aesthetic clinic owners. My conclusion is that AI will increasingly influence almost every part of an aesthetic business.
But that doesn’t mean every clinic needs to become an AI business. It means clinic owners need to understand enough about AI to make sensible decisions about where it can – and cannot – help them.
AI is much more than a content-writing tool
One way I have found useful to think about AI is to divide its potential applications into five broad areas.
The first is thinking.
AI can be an extremely useful thinking partner. It can help explore ideas, challenge assumptions, develop strategies, identify potential problems and consider different approaches to a business issue.
The second is creating.
This is probably the area most people are already familiar with: producing articles, patient information, emails, social media posts, marketing campaigns, staff documents and other written material.
The third is communicating.
AI can increasingly help businesses respond to enquiries, answer common questions, personalise follow-up communication and support reception and customer service teams.
The fourth is analysing.
This may ultimately be one of the most valuable applications.
AI can analyse large amounts of information much faster than a human being. That might include patient reviews, surveys, telephone calls, consultation transcripts, marketing data or internal meeting notes.
And finally, there is automating.
AI is beginning to move beyond simply answering questions towards actually performing tasks and connecting different systems together.
When viewed in this way, AI becomes less of a marketing tool and more of a new business capability.
Start with the problem – not the AI
One mistake I increasingly see is businesses asking: “How can we use more AI?”
I don’t think that is the right starting point. The better question is: “Where are we currently losing time, money or patients?”
In my work coaching aesthetic clinics, one of the most important things I try to identify is the constraint in a business. For example, a clinic may be spending significant amounts of money generating enquiries but convert relatively few of those enquiries into consultations. Another clinic may have practitioners repeatedly answering exactly the same patient questions. Another may have hundreds of Google reviews but have never analysed them to understand exactly what patients value most about the clinic. Others may struggle to create useful educational content or consistently follow up potential patients. These are business problems.
Only once we understand the problem should we ask whether AI could help solve it. That distinction is important. AI should not be something that clinics adopt simply because everyone is talking about it. Like any technology, it is useful when it improves an outcome.
Before creating more information, analyse what you already have
Much of the current discussion about AI focuses on creation. But one of the most interesting uses of artificial intelligence is analysis. Most clinics already possess enormous amounts of useful information that they rarely examine properly.
Take online reviews. A clinic might have 200 or 300 Google reviews. Rather than simply looking at the star rating, AI can analyse those reviews and identify recurring themes. What do patients repeatedly praise? What words do they use to describe the experience? Why did they originally choose the clinic? What concerns did they have before treatment? That information can influence everything from staff training to website messaging.
The same principle can be applied to telephone calls. If a clinic records its enquiry calls, AI can help identify why some calls convert into consultations and others don’t. Does the receptionist ask enough questions? Do they explain the consultation properly? Do they build trust? Do they ask the caller to book?
Similarly, AI can analyse patient surveys, consultation notes, meeting transcripts and marketing performance.
So, before asking AI to create more information, clinics should consider asking it to make sense of the information they already have. That may reveal opportunities that have been sitting inside the business for years.
Where should AI not be used?
The enthusiasm surrounding AI sometimes creates another problem. Because AI can do something, we assume it should. Aesthetic medicine is very different from many other consumer industries because clinical judgement and patient safety are involved.
There are relatively low-risk activities where AI can be extremely helpful. Drafting educational content, analysing reviews, summarising meetings, generating marketing ideas or reviewing business processes are obvious examples.
But there are other areas where considerably more caution is required, such as clinical diagnosis, deciding whether a patient is suitable for treatment, assessing vulnerable patients, managing complications and obtaining informed consent; all require professional judgement.
AI may eventually support practitioners in some of these areas, but responsibility cannot simply be delegated to an algorithm.
A useful principle is: The greater the consequence of AI being wrong, the greater the need for human oversight.
Clinic owners also need to understand the implications of putting confidential information into AI systems.
Patient information, medical records, staff data and commercially sensitive information should never casually be uploaded into an AI platform without understanding how that data is being processed and protected. This is one reason why I believe clinics should begin developing a simple AI-use policy.
That policy might state which AI platforms staff can use, what information must never be uploaded, which outputs require human checking and which activities should remain outside AI altogether.
It does not need to be complicated. But as more employees begin independently experimenting with AI, having some basic rules is becoming increasingly important.
AI is not only changing clinics. It is changing patients.
Perhaps the most significant change will not happen inside clinics at all. It will happen before the patient contacts you.
Traditionally, somebody considering an aesthetic treatment might have searched Google, looked at clinic websites, read reviews and perhaps asked friends for recommendations.
Increasingly, they can simply ask an AI. For example:
“What questions should I ask before having Botox?”
“How do I know whether an aesthetic practitioner is properly qualified?”
“What are the risks of dermal fillers?”
“What should I look for when choosing a clinic?”
“Is £350 expensive for this treatment?”
AI can instantly give consumers sophisticated questions to ask.
I have spoken to experienced practitioners who have noticed patients arriving at consultations asking much more detailed questions about qualifications, treatment experience and expertise.
It is impossible to prove that AI is responsible for this change, but it would not surprise me if it is contributing to it. And this has major implications for how clinics market themselves.
For years, I have been an advocate of the Marcus Sheridan principle known as They Ask, You Answer.
The idea is simple. Identify the questions prospective patients genuinely ask and create useful, transparent content that answers them properly.
That might include questions about cost, risks, alternatives, expected results, suitability, problems with treatments and how different providers compare.
This approach is becoming even more relevant because your website is no longer necessarily being read only by humans.
AI systems are also increasingly using information published online to understand businesses, practitioners and services. Which raises an interesting question:
If somebody asked an AI today to recommend the best clinic in your area for a particular treatment, would there be enough evidence online for the AI to recommend you?
Simply claiming to offer “excellent patient care” or “high-quality treatments” probably won’t be enough. Almost every clinic says that. Demonstrating expertise may increasingly require detailed evidence.
- Who performs the treatments?
- What are their qualifications?
- How long have they been treating patients?
- How many procedures have they performed?
- What particular conditions do they specialise in?
- How does your approach differ from another provider?
AI could make transparent, useful educational content considerably more important.
The next stage: AI agents
There is another development clinic owners should at least be aware of: AI agents. Most of us currently interact with AI by giving it an instruction and receiving an answer.
AI agents potentially take this further. Instead of simply answering a question, an
AI agent can potentially perform a series of tasks to achieve an objective. Imagine a patient saying: “Find me three reputable clinics within 20 miles that specialise in treating pigmentation, compare their practitioners, reviews, prices and availability, and find me a consultation next Thursday.”
Today, the patient might manually perform several Google searches and visit multiple websites. In the future, much of that research could be performed automatically by their AI assistant.
Their AI may eventually communicate directly with the clinic’s systems to check availability or arrange the appointment. We don’t yet know exactly how quickly this will develop or what the final model will look like.
But the direction is clear. AI is becoming more capable of acting, not simply answering. For clinic owners, that creates both opportunities and risks around permissions, cybersecurity, patient data, accountability and automation. It is another reason clinics should start improving the quality and structure of their digital information now.
Five principles for using AI sensibly
Despite the speed at which the technology is changing, I think there are some relatively simple principles clinics can apply.
First, start with the business problem, not the AI tool.
Second, never delegate accountability to AI. A machine can help you make decisions, but somebody still needs to take responsibility for them.
Third, protect confidential information. Assume that patient and sensitive business data require proper governance.
Fourth, check important outputs. AI can produce very convincing answers that are completely wrong.
And finally, experiment.
I don’t believe clinics need to rush into every new AI tool. In fact, doing so would probably create more distraction than benefit.
But ignoring AI completely would be equally unwise.
We are still early enough in this technological shift that there is enormous value in simply learning what AI can do, experimenting with practical applications and gradually building capability within the business.
The opportunity ahead
I don’t believe AI will replace the aesthetic practitioner. Aesthetic medicine involves relationships, trust, judgement, empathy, technical skill and responsibility – all deeply human qualities.
But I do believe that practitioners and clinics that learn how to use AI intelligently may develop a considerable advantage over those that don’t.
That advantage could come from better marketing. It could come from faster analysis. It could come from improved communication. It could come from automating repetitive administrative work. And increasingly, it may come from making the clinic’s expertise easier for both patients and AI systems to discover and understand.
The objective therefore shouldn’t be to become an “AI clinic”. It should simply be to become a better clinic by using AI where it genuinely helps – and retaining human judgement where it matters most.
Artificial intelligence is going to continue developing whether the aesthetics industry engages with it or not. The sensible approach is neither to fear it nor blindly embrace it. It is to understand it. And then use it deliberately.
I created the Aesthetics AI newsletter for exactly that reason. AI is developing far too quickly for most clinic owners to follow everything that is happening – and most AI news isn’t particularly relevant to running an aesthetic business anyway.
The free newsletter looks specifically at developments in artificial intelligence that may matter to aesthetic clinics, along with practical examples of how AI can be used in the real world.
If you want to keep up with what is changing – without having to become an AI expert yourself – you can subscribe at aestheticsai.co.uk.