With the increasing accessibility of tools such as ChatGPT, Copilot, DeepSeek, Dall-E, and Gemini, generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) has been poised as a potential, research timesaving tool, especially for synthesising evidence. Our objective was to determine whether GenAI can assist with evidence synthesis by assessing its performance using its accuracy, error rates, and time savings compared to the traditional expert-driven approach.

To systematically review the evidence, we searched five databases on 17 January 2025, synthesised outcomes reporting on the accuracy, error rates, or time taken, and appraised the risk-of-bias using a modified version of QUADAS-2.

We identified 3,071 unique records, 19 of which were included in our review. Most studies had a high or unclear risk-of-bias in Domain 1A: review selection, Domain 2A: GenAI conduct, and Domain 1B: applicability of results. When used for (1) searching GenAI missed 68% to 96% (median = 91%) of studies, (2) screening made incorrect inclusion decisions ranging from 0% to 29% (median = 10%); and incorrect exclusion decisions ranging from 1% to 83% (median = 28%), (3) incorrect data extractions ranging from 4% to 31% (median = 14%), (4) incorrect risk-of-bias assessments ranging from 10% to 56% (median = 27%).

Our review shows that the current evidence does not support GenAI use in evidence synthesis without human involvement or oversight. However, for most tasks other than searching, GenAI may have a role in assisting humans with evidence synthesis.