Families Are Asking AI About Your Community. Half Who Could Judge Found Errors.
Picture the tour. The coffee is fresh. The brochures are fanned out on the table. The family walks in already holding an answer: your community offers memory care, has an opening next month, and costs about what they saw online. Some of it came from an AI assistant their daughter asked the night before. Some of it is wrong.
That scene is now ordinary. A U.S. News & World Report online survey of more than 500 U.S. adults researching or recently moved into senior living found that 70% use generative AI tools like ChatGPT and Claude in their search. Younger adults lead: among those 18 to 44, 53% use AI for discovery, 33% to draft outreach emails, and 32% to investigate safety records and complaints. And 82% of AI users say they'd trust an AI recommendation enough to book a tour.
The problem is accuracy. Among respondents with enough experience to judge, 51% encountered incorrect AI-generated information. The most common errors were misstated care levels and amenities (60%), wrong availability or wait times (44%), outdated pricing (35%), and communities that don't exist (21%). (The survey was issued by U.S. News, which sells senior living ratings, and fielding dates weren't disclosed.)
It's not that AI is replacing the tour. It's that AI is writing the first draft of your reputation, and nobody on your team approved it. The decision still happens in person: 43% of respondents named a positive gut feeling on the tour as the deciding factor, and 40% said interactions with residents and staff carried the most weight.
For the sales director, that means starting some relationships by correcting the family, which can feel like a bait-and-switch even when your team did nothing wrong. For leadership, it means public information is now a governance item, with an owner, an audit, and a correction process.
This week's test is simple. Ask three AI assistants what they know about your community's care levels, pricing, and availability, and screenshot the answers.
Then assign one person to own every public-facing fact, from your website to directory listings, and correct errors at the source. Add one question to intake: "Where did you hear that?"
Read the full research behind this story, plus this week's insurance coverage and governance flagships, in the LITT Briefing on Substack.