Kinney Drugs Scales Back AI Assistant After Hundreds Complain

A regional drugstore chain serving upstate New York and Vermont is sharply curtailing its AI-powered customer service system after receiving hundreds of complaints from patients who reported receiving wrong dosage information, missed prescription notifications, and incoherent automated calls.

Kinney Drugs launched an AI assistant named Burt—after the pharmacy chain's founder—in May 2026 to handle prescription and refill communications with patients. Within months, the system had generated enough problems that the company decided to return to traditional touch-tone phone systems for incoming patient calls.

What went wrong

Customers reported multiple serious issues with the AI system. The automated assistant delivered incoherent calls to patients, provided incorrect dosage information, and failed to notify customers about their prescriptions as intended. The problems were significant enough that Kinney Drugs President John Marraffa publicly acknowledged the failures.

"One thing I want to point out is getting privacy and security right does not mean we got the experience right. We did not, and we own that," Marraffa said.

Beyond operational failures, customers raised concerns about data privacy and whether their personal health information could be exposed through the AI platform. Marraffa responded that Burt is fully HIPAA compliant and that the AI is not open-source and does not generate or manipulate data.

Limited role going forward

Kinney Drugs is not eliminating Burt entirely. The company will continue using the AI assistant for outbound communications, specifically prescription refill text messages. However, patients must now opt in to receive these automated messages.

The decision to scale back represents a significant retreat from the company's initial automation strategy. By returning to touch-tone systems for incoming calls, Kinney Drugs is choosing older, proven technology over newer AI capabilities that proved unreliable in practice.

Why it matters

This rollback illustrates the high stakes of deploying AI in healthcare settings, where errors can directly affect patient safety. Wrong dosage information or missed prescription notifications are not minor inconveniences—they can lead to serious health consequences. The incident demonstrates that HIPAA compliance and data security, while necessary, are insufficient if the system cannot reliably perform its core function. As healthcare organizations rush to adopt AI tools, Kinney Drugs' experience serves as a cautionary example that technical readiness and regulatory compliance do not guarantee a system will work effectively for patients in real-world conditions.

These details were first reported by WCAX.