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Arch Craniofac Surg
Arch Craniofac Surg
ACFS
Archives of Craniofacial Surgery
2287-1152
2287-5603
Korean Cleft Palate-Craniofacial Association

10.7181/acfs.2024.00423
acfs-2024-00423
Letter
Reply: Comment on “The new frontier: utilizing ChatGPT to expand craniofacial research”
http://orcid.org/0009-0005-2851-0736
Zhang Andi 1
http://orcid.org/0009-0001-8423-3965
Dimock Ethan 2
http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1491-2441
Gupta Rohun 1
http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2545-6381
Chen Kevin 1
1 Division of Plastic Surgery, Saint Louis University School of Medicine, St. Louis, MO, USA
2 Oakland University William Beaumont School of Medicine, Rochester, MI, USA
Correspondence: Andi Zhang Division of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, Saint Louis University School of Medicine, SLUCare Academic Pavilion 1008 S. Spring Ave, Suite 1500 St. Louis, MO 63110, USA E-mail: andyzhang214@gmail.com
8 2024
20 8 2024
25 4 207208
25 7 2024
25 7 2024
10 8 2024
Copyright © 2024 Korean Cleft Palate-Craniofacial Association
2024
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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pmcReply:

We would like to respond to the comment by Daungsupawong and Wiwanitkit on our published article “The new frontier: utilizing ChatGPT to expand craniofacial research” [1]. Our study demonstrated ChatGPT’s ability to generate novel systematic review ideas within the field of craniofacial surgery. Our results showed an average 57.5% total accuracy across both general and specific topics, 39% accuracy for general topics, and 76% for specific topics.

The authors in the reply letter discussed two main points: (1) the need for further investigation of ChatGPT’s ability to generate specialized research ideas and (2) the usage of only four well-known medical resources for the cross-referencing and assessment of ChatGPT’s accuracy. We will address each point individually below: we agree with the commenters that ChatGPT’s accuracy and dependability in producing research ideas were called into question by this study. The inability of ChatGPT to produce novel general topics highlights the difficulty of acquiring a specialized knowledge base, such as in craniofacial surgery, and the need to examine whether later iterations of ChatGPT with larger and more up-to-date training databases will perform better.

Regarding the decision to utilize four major medical literature databases to cross-reference ChatGPT’s accuracy for generating novel research ideas; we believe that the current blend of broad and specialized medical literature databases is optimal and provides an accurate reflection of the state of literature currently available. In any type of literature search or review, a balance needs to be achieved between minimizing the manual search burden for the investigators and not missing relevant references, thereby reducing the validity of the research [2]. However, the authors agree that increasing the number of databases searched would contribute to a more comprehensive search. It is possible that by increasing the number of databases searched, ChatGPT’s accuracy might decrease slightly when previously considered novel ideas are found in the newly added medical literature databases.

Overall, we agree with the commentors’ observation that artificial intelligence (AI) in craniofacial research needs to be studied further. With the release of more advanced large language mode in recent months, their abilities to generate general and specialized topics need to be examined.

AI declaration: the author used a language editing computational tool in preparation of the article.

Conflict of interest

No potential conflict of interest relevant to this article was reported.

Funding

None.
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REFERENCES

1 Zhang A Dimock E Gupta R Chen K The new frontier: utilizing ChatGPT to expand craniofacial research Arch Craniofac Surg 2024 25 116 22 38977396
2 Bramer WM Rethlefsen ML Kleijnen J Franco OH Optimal database combinations for literature searches in systematic reviews: a prospective exploratory study Syst Rev 2017 6 245 29208034
