To compare public trust, confidence, comfort, and privacy concerns regarding dermatologists and AI for facial skin evaluation and skincare management planning.
Approach:
Design and participants: Cross-sectional survey of 147 English-speaking adults recruited through Amazon Mechanical Turk between September and October 2025.
Measures and analysis: Likert-scale responses assessed confidence, trust, comfort, self-consciousness, and privacy and data-security concerns. Paired responses for AI and dermatologist evaluations were compared using Wilcoxon signed-rank tests.
Key Findings:
Participants reported greater confidence in dermatologists than AI for facial-feature evaluation (means 4.37 vs. 3.82; P < 0.001) and greater trust in dermatologists for skincare plans (4.46 vs. 3.87; P < 0.001).
Comfort with skin evaluation and self-consciousness about the evaluation were similar for dermatologists and AI in the overall sample.
AI security concerns were reported by 69% of participants; 66% expressed trust in AI safeguards.
Among participants concerned about AI security, self-consciousness was higher for AI than dermatologist evaluations (4.07 vs. 3.89; P = 0.028).
Prior AI skincare or cosmetic tool use was reported by 57%; in this subgroup, self-consciousness was higher during AI evaluations (3.96 vs. 3.75; P = 0.012).
Interpretation:
Participants reported greater confidence in dermatologists for facial-feature evaluation and greater trust in dermatologists for skincare planning, while comfort and self-consciousness were similar overall for AI and dermatologist evaluations. The authors note that data-security concerns could represent an obstacle to adopting AI systems.
Limitations:
The survey used a cross-sectional design and recruited participants through Amazon Mechanical Turk.
The provided article context does not report additional study limitations.
Conclusion:
The study found greater public confidence and trust in dermatologists than AI for facial skin assessment and skincare management planning, alongside reported concerns about AI data security.
