What You’ll Learn:

Table of Contents

• The AI Product Explosion
• What’s Available Right Now
• The Consolidation Coming
• The Early Adopter Risk
• How to Evaluate AI Tools Today
• The Bottom Line About AI Tools for Dentists
• FAQ

AI Tools Are In, But Which Ones Should You Adopt?

The AI Product Explosion

The reason your inbox is flooded with AI pitches comes down to the fact that building AI products has become remarkably accessible. The heavy lifting is done by large language models like ChatGPT, Claude, and Google Gemini. Entrepreneurs can build on top of these foundations without needing massive development budgets.

“Setting it up is actually really really simple,” Lefler explained. “There’s even white-labeled solutions out there that you just go pay $49 a month and you can build your own AI agent.”

This low barrier to entry means dozens of companies are racing to solve the same problems. When Lefler’s company launched their AI chat product about 18 months ago, there were maybe two or three competitors. Now he counts at least 80 companies offering some form of AI receptionist or chat solution for dental practices.

The same pattern is playing out across every category of dental AI.

What’s Available Right Now

Here’s a snapshot of the major AI categories currently targeting dental practices:

• AI Receptionists and Chat: These tools answer phone calls, manage website chat, and handle basic patient inquiries 24/7. Some can schedule appointments directly into your practice management system. Annie AI falls into this category.
• AI Diagnostic Tools: Companies like Pearl and Overjet use AI to analyze X-rays and identify potential issues. These are backed by serious venture capital funding and have gone through FDA approval processes.
• AI Note-Taking: These tools listen to patient conversations and automatically generate clinical notes for your PMS. The goal is eliminating the documentation burden that eats up so much chair time.
• AI Insurance Verification: Rather than having staff manually verify benefits, these tools automate the process. Some are thriving; others have already gone under.
• AI Perio Charting: Voice-activated charting that records measurements without requiring a second team member to input data.
• AI Patient Reactivation: Tools that automatically call patients who are overdue for hygiene appointments and schedule them without staff involvement.

The Consolidation Coming

The thing is, this fragmented market won’t last. Within three to five years, Lefler expects massive consolidation.

“Right now, if you bought Pearl, Annie, eAssist for your insurance verification, the notetaker company, a perio charting AI company, you’re gonna spend $2,000 to $2,500 a month,” Lefler explained. “You’re going to have all of those services for $500, maybe $700. A few hundred bucks. They all get consolidated.”

The logic is straightforward. Once a company has an AI agent trained on your practice data and integrated with your PMS, adding additional capabilities is relatively simple. An AI receptionist can learn to do note-taking. A note-taking tool can expand into insurance verification. The boundaries between these products will blur and then disappear.

“Our product Annie will eventually do note-taking,” Lefler said. “It’ll eventually do billing. It’ll do outbound hygiene recare.” What starts as a single-purpose tool becomes a comprehensive AI assistant.

The Early Adopter Risk

Being an early adopter of AI tools comes with real risks. The technology is being figured out in real time, and not every product works as promised.

Lefler shared a story from Annie AI’s early days. A practice wanted their AI receptionist to handle calls in both English and Spanish. The documentation said it could do this automatically. In reality, when a Spanish-speaking patient called, the AI responded in what Lefler described as “Spanglish,” mixing English words with a Spanish accent and occasional Spanish terms.

“That’s an example of early adopter problems,” he admitted. The issue has since been fixed, but it illustrates the reality of adopting emerging technology.

The flip side? These tools improve rapidly. The underlying AI models receive billions of dollars in development investment. When ChatGPT improves from version 4 to version 5, every tool built on top of it gets better automatically.

“It just gets better and better and better,” Lefler said. “At some point it’s not going to make any freaking mistakes. It’s going to understand every language.”

How to Evaluate AI Tools Today

Given the rapid change and coming consolidation, how should you approach AI purchases? A few principles:

• Start with your biggest pain point. Don’t try to implement five AI tools at once. Identify the single area where automation would have the biggest impact, whether that’s missed calls, documentation time, or hygiene reactivation.
• Prioritize PMS integration. AI tools that integrate directly with your practice management system deliver far more value than standalone products. The ability to actually schedule appointments or pull patient data makes the difference between a novelty and a genuine productivity gain.
• Look for dental-specific solutions. Generic AI tools require more customization and often miss industry-specific nuances. Products built specifically for dental practices understand the workflows, terminology, and patient expectations unique to dentistry.
• Avoid long contracts. Given how quickly this market is evolving, locking into multi-year agreements with any single vendor is risky. Look for month-to-month options or short commitment periods.
• Watch for consolidation plays. Companies that are expanding their feature sets and building comprehensive platforms may be better long-term partners than single-purpose tools that could become obsolete.

The Bottom Line About AI Tools for Dentists

AI is coming to every dental practice. That’s not a prediction; it’s already happening. The question isn’t whether to adopt AI tools, but which ones to adopt and when.

The current market is chaotic, with dozens of companies competing in each category. Over the next few years, that chaos will resolve into a handful of comprehensive platforms. Prices will drop dramatically as capabilities consolidate.

For now, be strategic. Solve your biggest problems first. Avoid long commitments. And expect the AI tool you buy today to be dramatically better, and probably cheaper, two years from now.

My Social Practice offers Annie AI, a dental-specific AI receptionist that handles phone calls, webchat, and hygiene reactivation. Built specifically for dental practices and designed to grow with the coming consolidation, Annie integrates directly with major practice management systems. Want to see how AI can reduce missed calls and free up your front desk? Schedule a demo today.

Frequently Asked Questions

About the Author: Megan Nielsen is an SEO strategist and the Grand Overlord of copywriting at My Social Practice. My Social Practice is a dental marketing company that offers a full suite of dental marketing services to thousands of dental practices throughout the United States and Canada.