The American Medical Association has adopted policy saying AI cannot be granted physician licensure, professional titles or certification to practice medicine.
The AMA House of Delegates approved the policy Nov. 9 at its Interim Meeting in Orlando, Fla. It calls for AI-enabled tools to be integrated into physician-led teams and used at the direction of the treating physician. AI used for for clinical functions such as diagnosis, prescribing and care management should have transparent, auditable evidence of safety and efficacy and be subject to regulation, documentation and liability requirements.
The AMA will push for model legislation that separates authorization of a medical technology from professional licensure and bars misrepresenting nonhuman entities with titles reserved for physicians. It will also seek liability protections for physicians who decline to use an AI tool or follow its recommendation.
Patients “deserve to know who is responsible for their care,” AMA President Willie Underwood III, MD, said in a Nov. 10 news release.
On liability, the AMA wants federal and state laws holding AI vendors, manufacturers or distributors responsible when a physician uses a clinical AI product as intended, exercises appropriate judgment and the product still produces an error that harms a patient. The association also wants AI companies to carry product liability insurance, disclose failure rates and performance across patient populations, and be barred from contract terms that shift liability to physicians or health systems.
Health systems face their own exposure under the policy. When a hospital, health system or payer mandates a specific AI tool and that tool causes harm, the AMA said the mandating organization and the vendor should bear liability. Delegates also called for physician-led oversight of AI used in credentialing, privileging, peer review and quality review.
The AMA released a clinical AI liability framework in October. The FDA had authorized more than 1,450 AI-enabled medical devices as of December 2025, according to the AMA.
