Search and SEO is undergoing one of its biggest changes in decades. AI-powered search engines and conversational AI tools like Google AI Overviews, Microsoft Copilot, and ChatGPT are no longer just listing websites – they’re providing instant, conversational answers synthesised from multiple sources.
For pharmaceutical and life sciences companies, this is both an opportunity and a risk. It’s now easier for patients and healthcare professionals (HCPs) to find information, but what if that information is wrong, out of date, or missing critical context? And how do you ensure your content remains discoverable, authoritative and ABPI-compliant in an AI-first search world?
1. AI Search vs Conversational AI – What’s the Difference?
It’s important to distinguish between AI search and AI chat tools:
- AI Search (e.g., Google AI Overviews): Still focused on delivering search results, but summarises answers at the top of the page. It uses multiple sources, including trusted websites, to generate a quick response.
- Conversational AI (e.g., ChatGPT, Copilot, Perplexity): These tools can answer questions directly without showing any links at all. They often rely on large language models (LLMs) trained on web content, documentation, and public datasets.
Implication for pharma:
Your content might influence these AI-generated answers even if users never click through to your site. That means compliance, clarity, and structure matter more than ever.
2. The ABPI Challenge
Pharma already operates in one of the most heavily regulated marketing environments. The ABPI Code dictates what can be communicated, to whom, and in what format. Many websites are carefully segmented into patient and HCP sections, often with clear signposting and logins.
Here’s the problem:
- AI tools like ChatGPT don’t distinguish between your audience segments. If an AI model reads HCP content intended for qualified professionals, it may summarise it for the public.
- AI can blend your content with unregulated sources, such as patient forums or blogs, potentially creating inaccurate or misleading answers.
- There’s little oversight of how these AI-generated summaries are produced, which creates reputational and compliance risks.
3. Why This Matters Now
Some pharma teams might feel this is “future stuff” that can wait. It isn’t. AI search is already rolling out globally, and behaviour is changing fast:
- Patients increasingly ask conversational health questions (“Is [drug name] safe in pregnancy?”) and expect instant answers.
- HCPs are experimenting with tools like ChatGPT for quick clinical summaries—especially younger clinicians who have grown up with digital technology.
If your site isn’t optimised for this new way of finding information, you risk being absent from these answers or, worse, represented incorrectly.
4. How Pharma Websites Can Adapt
a) Make Content “AI‑Readable”
AI search relies on structured signals to understand and trust content. Pharma sites can:
- Implement schema markup for MedicalWebPage, Drug, MedicalCondition, and FAQs to signal context.
- Ensure prescribing information (PI) and safety statements link to official MHRA/EMC sources.
- Use clear, accessible language that AI models can parse accurately, avoiding jargon or overly complex layouts.
b) Review Audience Signposting
AI does not respect your “This content is for HCPs only” pop-up. To manage risk:
- Ensure patient-facing content is complete, accurate, and easy to interpret on its own.
- Include disclaimers and safety context within the text itself, so if AI lifts it, compliance context remains intact.
- For HCP content, consider how much information truly needs to sit behind logins and whether summaries or signposts can exist publicly.
c) Build a Content Governance Model
Monitoring how AI presents your brand will become an ongoing responsibility. Steps include:
- Regularly check how your brand or products appear in AI answers across Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT, and similar tools.
- Review metadata, structured data, and disclaimers quarterly. AI search evolves quickly; your content strategy must keep up.
- Create rapid update processes. If AI search returns inaccurate or non-compliant summaries, your content team must respond quickly.
5. Can You Stop AI Models Using Your Website Content?
Many pharma teams are asking: “Can we stop our content being used to train AI models like ChatGPT?”
The Reality
Completely preventing your content from being scraped or used in AI training is very difficult. If information is publicly accessible, there’s always a risk it will be indexed or summarised by AI systems. However, there are steps you can take to reduce that risk and control how your content is accessed.
Standard Web Signals
Some AI companies respect signals like noai and noimageai meta tags, which indicate your content shouldn’t be used for AI training. While not legally binding and not honoured by all players, they help communicate your position.
Gated Content
Highly regulated content – such as prescribing information for HCPs is best kept behind logins or access controls. This limits scraping and supports ABPI compliance.
Terms of Use
Add clear clauses to your website’s terms of use explicitly prohibiting AI training from your content. This provides a legal basis if your material is misused.
Monitor and Audit
Regularly check how your content appears in AI search results and tools like ChatGPT. If you see inaccuracies or misuse, engage with the platform or adjust how your content is structured.
6. What About “Noindex”
Noindex is often misunderstood as a solution for blocking AI. In reality:
- Noindex tells search engines (like Google and Bing) not to index a page in their search results.
- It does not prevent the page from being crawled or scraped by bots, including those used for AI model training.
- AI training crawlers often operate independently of search indexing bots and may ignore noindex entirely.
Bottom line:
Noindex is useful for controlling visibility in search results but not for stopping AI scraping. If you want to limit AI access, focus on:
- noai meta tags
- Access controls and gating
- Strong terms of use
- Active monitoring of AI output
7. The Strategic Opportunity
It’s easy to see AI search and ChatGPT as threats, but they’re also opportunities to:
- Position your website as the “source of truth”: If AI engines trust your content, you’ll still feature prominently in answers.
- Reduce misinformation: Providing accurate, compliant content reduces reliance on unverified sources.
- Show digital leadership: Patients and HCPs expect digital innovation so being AI‑search‑ready signals a proactive approach.
8. What to Do Next
- Audit your site: Identify which pages are most likely to appear in AI summaries (product pages, safety info, patient support).
- Add structured data: Implement schema markup to make content machine-readable.
- Review compliance in context: Assume your content might be summarised out of context – are disclaimers clear enough?
- Monitor search outputs: Check AI search results and ChatGPT outputs regularly for accuracy.
- Plan for continuous improvement: Treat AI search readiness as an ongoing programme, not a one‑off project.
Conclusion
AI search and conversational AI tools like ChatGPT are not just trends, they’re fundamentally changing how patients and HCPs access healthcare information. For pharma and life sciences companies, this brings both risk and opportunity.
By structuring your content, improving patient education materials, tightening compliance governance, and setting clear policies on AI access, you can ensure your site remains a trusted, authoritative resource in an AI‑first world.
At Genetic Digital, we help pharma clients future‑proof their websites for these changes, combining deep digital expertise with the unique compliance demands of the ABPI Code.
Want to know how AI search and ChatGPT could impact your site? Contact us today to learn more about our pharma SEO services.
