Dental AI receptionists are everywhere right now. If you’re a dentist, I can almost guarantee that you’ve been hit up by multiple companies through email, phone calls, or ads, pitching their “revolutionary” AI receptionist that’s supposedly going to change your practice forever.

And it’s not just dentistry. AI phone agents are the hot new thing in every industry right now. A million companies have popped up in the last year offering some version of this tech, and they’re all scrambling to convince you that it’s the future. If you’ve ever taken a demo of one of these systems, you probably had the same first reaction that a lot of dentists do:

“Wow, this thing is pretty good and actually sounds like a real person.”

It responds quickly. It seems knowledgeable and professional. It doesn’t get flustered. You can interrupt it mid-sentence, and it still keeps up. And at first glance, it might even seem like it does a better job than a human receptionist. Plus, it works 24/7 and costs way less than a salary. What’s not to love?

A lot of dentists get excited and jump on board, thinking they’re getting in on the ground floor of some huge industry shift. Sure, there are some bugs here and there, but the company assures them it’s just part of the setup process—nothing they can’t fine-tune with a little tweaking.

A few months go by, and that initial excitement starts to wear off. Instead of transforming the front desk, the AI starts to feel more like a hassle. You start seeing posts pop up on Dental Town like THIS, essentially saying:

“At first, I was impressed. There were some minor issues, but I figured it just needed time to improve. The company was responsive and promised updates. But after a few months… yeah, this isn’t working. I told my office manager to scrap it and go back to the old-school answering machine.”

Or like THIS, where the gist of it is:

“Same experience here. At first, I thought it had potential, but patients HATED it. They got frustrated having to repeat their names and birthdates over and over. The AI just didn’t understand them well enough. Honestly, the tech just isn’t there yet. Buyer beware.”

And these stories? They’re everywhere.

Dentists who try these AI receptionists usually end up disappointed once the honeymoon phase is over. I want to break exactly why these systems seem so impressive at first—but end up being more trouble than they’re worth.

So what’s actually wrong with these AI receptionists?

First off, they’re ridiculously easy to build. That’s why you’re seeing so many of these companies pop up overnight. In reality, they’re all using the same white-label software under the hood. They slap on their logo, tweak a few settings, and start selling it to dentists for hundreds of dollars a month—even though it only costs them $10–$20 a month to run.

The reason so many companies are jumping on this bandwagon isn’t because they’re passionate about AI or improving your practice. It’s because it’s a ridiculously profitable business. Most dentists will stick with an AI receptionist for at least three to six months or more to give it a fair shot, hoping it’ll get better. That’s plenty of time for these companies to make their money—even if the dentists eventually get frustrated and leave.

I actually made two videos showing just how easy it is to create one of these AI receptionists. In the first video, I spent five minutes writing out basic instructions, and the AI would probably impress most dentists and feel like it’s a high-tech solution.

In the second video, I spent 15 minutes tweaking it to handle follow-up calls and appointment confirmations. That’s it, no coding experience required.

And here’s the kicker—my coding knowledge is very basic. We employ a lot of talented developers at RevUp Dental, some with PHDs in machine learning from top universities… but my skill level is about a quarter of what an entry-level college student could do. And yet, in 20 minutes, I had a functional and pretty impressive AI receptionist built.

These AI receptionist companies want you to think they’re building some groundbreaking technology. They’re not. Most of them are just cobbling together the same off-the-shelf tools, charging a premium for it, and calling it innovation.

Dentists who sign up for AI receptionists often start out excited—but within a few months, they realize the system isn’t improving, and they quit. And it’s not because the AI “needs more time to learn.”

The real issue? These companies didn’t actually build the tech—they’re just reselling it. They’re taking off-the-shelf AI tools, slapping their logo on them, and charging dentists a premium. Since they don’t own or control the core technology, they have no real way to fix the problems.

At their core, these AI receptionists are just two basic systems glued together. A language model like ChatGPT that generates text-based responses, and a voice model like Eleven Labs that converts that text into speech. As I showed in my videos, tools like Retell AI make it incredibly easy for anyone—even without coding knowledge—to build one of these systems. And that’s exactly what most of these companies are doing.

Why is that? AI models like ChatGPT have a limited context window.

Think of it like a computer with limited RAM. The more information you feed it, the slower it gets. Once it runs out of memory, it starts to forget earlier parts of the conversation. The ChatGPT 4o mode for example has a 128,000 token context window, which translates to around 85,000 – 100,000 words.

The biggest reason these AI receptionists fail? Context windows.

Think of a context window like a computer’s short-term memory—once it fills up, the AI forgets earlier parts of the conversation.

For example, ChatGPT-4o has a 128,000-token context window, which is roughly 85,000–100,000 words. Sounds like a lot, right? But in practice, it’s very limited for something as complex as managing patient calls.

When I built my example AI receptionist, I gave it about 500–1,000 words of instructions. That kept it fast and responsive—but also pretty dumb. It didn’t actually “understand” dentistry or how to be a great receptionist. It just followed some basic scripts and confidently made things up when it didn’t know the answer.

And in a real-world setting? The longer the conversation goes on, the worse it gets. The AI starts forgetting key details, losing track of what was said earlier, and making increasingly random or incorrect responses. Patients pick up on this quickly—and they hate it.

So, what if we just give the AI more instructions? What if we train it using a huge receptionist manual?

Let’s say we give it a 200-page training guide—about 50,000–60,000 words—with detailed instructions on handling every possible patient question. A manual for how to be a great dental receptionist. Wouldn’t that make it smarter? Not really, and here’s why:

1. It slows down dramatically. When the AI only has 1,000 words of instructions, it can answer almost instantly. But when it has to process 50,000+ words before every response, it takes 5-10 seconds to reply. No patient is going to wait that long for a simple answer. Would you talk to an AI receptionist that remained silent for 10 seconds every time you asked a question? I doubt it.

2. It gets way more expensive. AI pricing is based on how much data (input and output tokens) the model processes. With just 1,000 words of instructions, it might cost 1 cent to start the model. But with 50,000+ words of instruction, that startup cost jumps to maybe 50 cents per session, plus additional charges for every question the patient asks and every response the model gives. That means AI receptionist companies either have to jack up their prices, or keep the AI dumb to stay profitable.

And that’s exactly what happens. These companies can’t make the AI as smart as a human receptionist, because if they did, the response times would be too slow and the costs would be too high. So instead, they keep it “good enough” to look impressive in a short demo—but not good enough for real patient interactions. No amount of tweaking is going to fix this.

When AI receptionist companies tell you to “stick with it” while they “work out the kinks,” they’re either clueless about how large language models actually work or they’re milking you for more money before you realize the system isn’t getting better.

Just look at the posts on DentalTown—dentists try these systems, hold out hope for months, and eventually give up when they realize it’s just not going to work. It’s honestly one big grift.

At the end of the day, AI receptionists aren’t actually thinking or understanding anything. They’re just really good at predicting what the next word in a sentence should be. They are in essence ‘next token prediction systems’. And because of their context window limitations, they either:

A. Sound decent in a short demo, but lack depth and accuracy for real world use.
B. Try to be smarter, but become too slow and expensive to run to be practical.

And that’s why, after a few months, most dentists end up scrapping them. No matter how impressive an AI receptionist might seem at first, the technical limitations mean it’s just not ready for real-world dental offices. And it won’t be for a long time.

So instead of chasing the AI receptionist hype, you’re far better off investing in great staff, training, and tools that actually work. Because no AI, no matter how fancy, can replace the human connection that makes a dental practice successful.