A patient just asked an AI where to get their MRI. Whatever it answered about you, nobody was accountable — until this month.

Try it yourself before reading on — ask ChatGPT or Google's AI where to get an MRI in your town. Somewhere in that answer is your center, or your competitor, or a price that hasn't been true since 2024. Patients run that exact search every day, and until now the answer lived in a strange no-man's-land: wrong all the time, owed by no one.

On July 1 the FTC put a nine-page proposed policy statement into that void. I read the PDF, not the coverage. The sentence that matters to you is on page one:

That is the federal government saying, in a formal policy document for the first time, that the accuracy of what an AI tells a consumer is Section 5 territory — the same consumer-protection law behind every deceptive-advertising case. The statement is aimed at AI companies, not at practices. But read it from your waiting room: the answers steering patients toward or away from your center — your prices, your locations, whether you offer 3T, whether you exist at all — just moved from "unfortunate when wrong" toward "somebody's legal problem when wrong." My position: the smart practices will treat what the AIs say about them the way they learned to treat their Google listing a decade ago — as a front door that needs an owner.

Kept honest: this is a PROPOSED statement (2-0 vote), it targets AI companies steering outputs — it imposes nothing on imaging practices, and it can change after comments. The direction is the story: AI answers about healthcare now have an accuracy standard on paper, a docket, and a deadline.

Sources (primary, verified today): FTC, Proposed Policy Statement Concerning the Suppression of Accuracy in Artificial Intelligence Systems (July 1, 2026, 9 pp.) — quoted verbatim from the PDF · FTC press release — comment deadline July 31, 2026; Commission vote 2-0; Federal Register publication pending. This edition shares its primary source with a companion piece for a marketing audience — same artifact, different room.

A patient asked an AI where to get their MRI this morning. Whatever it answered about your center — nobody was accountable for it. Until this month.

On July 1 the FTC published a proposed policy statement on AI accuracy. Page one, verbatim:

"Consumers have a reasonable expectation that AI systems aim to give truthful and accurate outputs."

First time a formal federal policy document has said it: what an AI tells a consumer belongs under Section 5 — the same law behind every deceptive-advertising case ever brought. It's aimed at AI companies, not practices. But read it from the waiting room: the answers steering patients toward or away from your center — prices, locations, capabilities — just moved from "unfortunate when wrong" toward "somebody's legal problem when wrong."

What I'd do this week:
1. Ask the major AIs about your own center. Where to get an MRI, what it costs, what you offer. Screenshot, with dates. Ten minutes.
2. Wrong answers trace to public sources the AIs read — your site, your listings. Fix the source, fix the answer.
3. Comments close July 31. If an AI misprices your exams or sends your patients across town, a regulator just formally asked to hear about it.

A decade ago the smart practices learned their Google listing was a front door. This is that moment for AI answers — with a federal accuracy standard now on paper.

Proposed, not final. But directions like this rarely reverse.

FIRST SOURCE · one verified original-source finding, composed for one reader · this edition: independent imaging and radiology practices