Readability tools, formulas and descriptions.

Ankylosing spondylitis (AS), which usually occurs in the second and third decades of life, is associated with chronic pain, limitation of mobility, and severe decreases in quality of life. This study aimed to make a comparative evaluation in terms of the readability, information accuracy and quality of the answers given by artificial intelligence (AI)-based chatbots such as ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini, which have become popular with the widespread access to medical information, to user questions about AS, a chronic inflammatory joint disease. In this study, the 25 most frequently queried keywords related to AS determined through Google Trends were directed to each 3 AI-based chatbots. The readability of the resulting responses was evaluated using readability indices such as Simple Gunning Fog (GFOG), Flesch Reading Ease Score (FRES) and Measure of Gobbledygook (SMOG). The quality of the responses was measured by Ensuring Quality Information for Patients (EQIP) and Global Quality Score (GQS) scores, and the reliability was measured using the modified DISCERN and Journal of American Medical Association (JAMA) scales. According to Google Trends data, the most frequently searched keywords related to AS are “Ankylosing spondylitis pain”, “Ankylosing spondylitis symptoms” and “Ankylosing spondylitis disease”, respectively. It was found that the readability levels of the answers produced by AI-based chatbots were above the 6th grade level and showed a statistically significant difference (p