Artificial intelligence chatbots as sources of patient education material for cataract surgery: ChatGPT-4 versus Google Bard.

Objective: To conduct a head-to-head comparative analysis of cataract surgery patient education material generated by Chat Generative Pre-trained Transformer (ChatGPT-4) and Google Bard.

Methods and analysis: 98 frequently asked questions on cataract surgery in English were taken in November 2023 from 5 trustworthy online patient information resources. 59 of these were curated (20 augmented for clarity and 39 duplicates excluded) and categorised into 3 domains: condition (n=15), preparation for surgery (n=21) and recovery after surgery (n=23). They were formulated into input prompts with 'prompt engineering'. Using the Patient Education Materials Assessment Tool-Printable (PEMAT-P) Auto-Scoring Form, four ophthalmologists independently graded ChatGPT-4 and Google Bard responses. The readability of responses was evaluated using a Flesch-Kincaid calculator. Responses were also subjectively examined for any inaccurate or harmful information.

Results: Google Bard had a higher mean overall Flesch-Kincaid Level (8.02) compared with ChatGPT-4 (5.75) (p<0.001), also noted across all three domains. ChatGPT-4 had a higher overall PEMAT-P understandability score (85.8%) in comparison to Google Bard (80.9%) (p<0.001), which was also noted in the 'preparation for cataract surgery' (85.2% vs 75.7%; p<0.001) and 'recovery after cataract surgery' (86.5% vs 82.3%; p=0.004) domains. There was no statistically significant difference in overall (42.5% vs 44.2%; p=0.344) or individual domain actionability scores (p>0.10). None of the generated material contained dangerous information.

Conclusion: In comparison to Google Bard, ChatGPT-4 fared better overall, scoring higher on the PEMAT-P understandability scale and exhibiting more faithfulness to the prompt engineering instruction. Since input prompts might vary from real-world patient searches, follow-up studies with patient participation are required.