By BRIAN JOONDEPH

Artificial intelligence is quickly becoming a core part of healthcare operations. It drafts clinical notes, summarizes patient visits, flags abnormal labs, triages messages, reviews imaging, helps with prior authorizations, and increasingly guides decision support. AI is no longer just a side experiment in medicine; it is becoming a key interpreter of clinical reality.

That raises an important question for physicians, administrators, and policymakers alike: Is AI accurately reflecting the real world? Or subtly reshaping it?

The data is simple. According to the U.S. Census Bureau’s July 2023 estimates, about 75 percent of Americans identify as White (including Hispanic and non-Hispanic), around 14 percent as Black or African American, roughly 6 percent as Asian, and smaller percentages as Native American, Pacific Islander, or multiracial. Hispanic or Latino individuals, who can be of any race, make up roughly 19 percent of the population.

In brief, the data are measurable, verifiable, and accessible to the public.

I recently carried out a simple experiment with broader implications beyond image creation. I asked two top AI image-generation platforms to produce a group photo that reflects the racial composition of the U.S. population based on official Census data.