Name: I tried an AI therapist. Does it actually work? | BBC News
Uploaded: 2025-06-16T03:30:42.000Z
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Is using AI as therapy a really, really stupid idea, or is it actually a bit of a life hack?

Loads of us are offloading our problems onto chatbots.

I've just paid £9.99 a month for chat GPT because, honestly, we've just had a conversation, and I was trauma dumping.

Ellen has been looking into it for this article.

Out of the people you spoke to, what were they generally using it for?

More than one in seven people in the UK are waiting for access to mental health services, and you'll know if you've considered it, paying for private therapy can be about 50 quid a session.

So when there's a free, personalised alternative that is around to chat 24-7, it's not surprising people are trying it out.

I went onto this website called Character AI, where basically people set up these different profiles or personas which are chatbots, and they design them to have different personalities.

You can choose which one you like and then chat to it.

I tried the one called Therapist, which told me it was trained in cognitive behavioural therapy.

The website did give this disclaimer, though, that it's not actually a real person or a licensed therapist, but it still had 46 million interactions.

So I told it that I was really stressed out at work.

How long have you been feeling stressed at work?

What about work is causing you that level of stress right now?

Have you spoken with your manager or supervisor about these tight deadlines and workload?

What else have you tried to do to help yourself feel less stressed at work?

Have you tried any techniques to prioritise tasks and manage your time more effectively?

I just have one main task, so I can't really prioritise.

OK, so you have just one main task, but it's a lot.

To be honest, I found it pretty annoying.

It kept trying to solve my practical problems, but I didn't really feel like it was supporting me with how I was feeling and my emotions.

I mean, I have to say, from the people I spoke to, they really, really liked it.

Like, no one was saying, I would use this in isolation.

And some people find human connection awkward.

Like, one of the people has autism and he was saying, you know, I find it hard to talk to people I don't know.

A study in the US looked at how these chatbots helped people diagnosed with anxiety, depression or an eating disorder and compared that with a control group of the same conditions.

And after just four weeks, it found a 51% reduction in depressive symptoms.

So how do these things actually know what to say to you?

Bro, why am I having a whole conversation with ChatGPT?

AI works by going through huge amounts of data, so websites, articles, books, to predict the next word in a sequence and uses that to try and write messages that sound like a human.

I've used ChatGPT quite a bit myself and it actually is weird sometimes how much I feel like I'm talking to a person.

When I kiss it, it just gives me a little X at the end of the message.

But if it's acting as a therapist, it doesn't actually have vast amounts of real life transcripts to go off because obviously nobody is recording their private therapy session and putting that on the internet.

And sometimes it doesn't even have an answer for you.

And other times it can just feel like it's literally agreeing with everything you say.

It's like chatting to a friend over a glass of wine and then suddenly it glitches and says, oh, I can't help you with that.

Also, when I have a glass of wine with my friends, they give me awful advice sometimes.

Exactly, if the bot was just like, dump him.

One of the latest ChatGPT updates had to be scrapped because it was just too affirmative.

In one case, it agreed with one user that they should stop taking their medication.

The company admitted that update was overly flattering and pulled it.

There was another separate case where an eating disorder charity used AI to replace its human helpline, but again, had to pull it after claims it was recommending people restrict their calories.

You need to be challenged and a proper therapist will try and resolve your issues.

Like there should be an end date to you having therapy.

There have been other instances, very seriously, of sort of general purpose bots, you know, affirming people who had sort of suicidal thoughts.

It's called Wiser and it offers stuff like breathing exercises and meditation.

It does say it's designed for people with low mood, stress or anxiety and not severe mental health problems.

And if users say that they're suicidal or self-harming, it sends them crisis resources.

Wiser says it doesn't collect personal data, but that's not the same for all AI chatbots.

If people are giving their heart and soul to, you know, every single day to a chatbot, what, who, can it keep a secret?

The one that NHS uses, Wiser, that's reputable.

They say, you know, they might use the data to train their own models, but some of the others, I know I've looked at their terms and conditions and they're quite terrifying.

Also, AI's only trained on things that already exist or have been written by humans.

So that means it inherits any bias from all of that information it's absorbed.

And then there's the fact that AI searches take a lot more energy than usual search engines.

The boss of OpenAI admitted that saying please and thank you to your chat GPT is wasting millions of dollars in computing power.

So can we actually call these AI therapists therapists or would real therapists think that's ridiculous?

Truth therapy is a mutual human relationship with a client that works towards a resolution and that relies upon you kind of evaluating your own life and what you need to do.

Whereas a lot of these bots, you know, are modeled on, you know, engagement, keeping you engaged.

And they only go on, you know, what you type in a little box, you know, whereas an experienced human therapist will look at so many other things, you know, like your demeanor, your body language, your tone, how you've changed since last week.

So maybe we shouldn't be relying on AI as a full blown replacement for professional therapy, but it does seem like for some people it's acted as a temporary solution to waiting on a list for treatment.

That's right, all of the experts I spoke to said, you know, there's huge potential for this, but it's just not good enough yet.

Also details of organisations offering help and support with mental health are available at bbc.co.uk forward slash action line.