Is it safe to use AI chatbots for therapy? Here’s what mental health experts say

CNN — I turned to ChatGPT on my laptop to check out the artificial intelligence bot’s therapeutic abilities. “Some users, some populations, might be more apt to disclose or open up more when talking with an AI chatbot, as compared to with a human being, there’s some research supporting their efficacy in helping some populations with mild anxiety and mild depression,” said Dr. Russell Fulmer, chair of the American Counseling Association’s Task Force on AI and a professor and director of graduate counseling programs at Husson University in Bangor, Maine. The bots might not have “safety parameters and ways of identifying if the issue needs to be taken over to a clinician or a human professional.” Chatbots could give out incorrect information or information that the user wants to hear instead of what a human therapist might recommend with mental health in mind, said Wei, who has a performance project that explores people’s reactions to AI clones of themselves and their loved ones. He told CNN that the chatbot “did an amazingly good job of sounding like a therapist and using many of the techniques … that a therapist would use around normalizing and validating a patient’s experience making certain kinds of general but accurate recommendations.” But what was missing was the inquisitiveness that a human psychotherapist might have with a patient, asking questions that dig a little deeper than what the patient initially says and that “connect the dots underneath the surface,” he added. “Then, in the back of your mind, you are trying to connect what they’re saying to some bigger picture things that the patient said before concepts and theories that you’re familiar with in your expertise, and then finally filtering the output of that through ideas about what’s going to be most helpful to the patient.” At this point, chatbots could pose risks if they were to fail to fulfill those steps and instead provide guidance that the patient may not be ready to hear or may not be helpful in the situation, he said.