Not many people know I actually trained as a counselor some 25 years ago. I never worked as one, but I still use the skills I picked every day. Which is why I am concerned that more than 1 in 5 adults in the US live with a mental illness, according to the CDC, and over 1 in 5 youth aged 13-18 have or have had a seriously debilitating mental illness. Therapy is crucial to people’s survival at a time when we are experiencing a dire therapist shortage.
So, when I was approached by TherapyWithAI.com, a company that aims to make therapy available to more people who need it by using a custom AI, I was intrigued and asked for a guest post about their platform. I want to make it clear that this is not an affiliate post, nor have I tried out their software yet (although I plan to test it as soon as I get a free moment). From what I’ve been reading about AI therapy, there seem to be two concerns regarding its use:
- Some AI therapists tend to agree with you rather than challenge you when necessary. For example, you may say, “I’m so mad at Bill! He was awful at work today; he spilled some water on me.” A therapist might ask if this was an accident and help you understand where your anger may stem from. An AI might simply agree with you that Bill is a jerk.
- Privacy is a big concern: who has access to your conversations and how will they be used? It’s one thing to anonymize the chats and use them to further train the AI. It’s quite another to sell them to advertising companies.
So, how does TherapyWithAI deal with all this? Here’s what they had to say about their product.
The State of AI
Ever since ChatGPT released its revolutionary model in 2023, it feels like we’re living in a new age – the age of artificial intelligence. AI is doing things no one thought possible. It writes academic papers and even spits out code like a professional software developer. It passes exams and standardized tests such as the SAT, the bar, and the CFA, and it’s rapidly surpassing human cognitive performance all around. As it excels in the linguistic realm, it was only natural that the use of AI would be directed towards the field of mental health, and towards talk therapy in particular. While there are many skeptics and naysayers in the traditional psychotherapy community, there have been a plethora of studies demonstrating a clear positive impact.
As this is often met with great skepticism, the claims surrounding the efficacy of AI in treating mental health issues must be grounded in scientific research. One such study was conducted by the NIH. In December of 2023, NPJ Digit Med published a systematic review and meta-analysis of AI-based conversational agents for promoting mental health and well-being. Their results were as follows:
The meta-analysis revealed that AI-based CAs significantly reduce symptoms of depression (Hedge’s g 0.64 [95% CI 0.17–1.12]) and distress (Hedge’s g 0.7 [95% CI 0.18–1.22]). These effects were more pronounced in CAs that are multimodal, generative AI-based, integrated with mobile/instant messaging apps, and targeting clinical/subclinical and elderly populations.
Their review definitely posits that AI therapy has a real basis, and a strong reason to believe that it could be highly effective.
This is supported by another study, conducted by the Journal of Medical Internet Research and published on Youper, a widely used artificial intelligence therapy app. They found that:
Overall, the reviewed investigations indicated significant positive consequences of using AI to enhance psychotherapy and reduce clinical symptomatology. Additionally, most studies reported high satisfaction, engagement, and retention rates when implementing AI to enhance psychotherapy in real- or close to real-time. Despite the potential of AI to make interventions more flexible and tailored to patients’ needs, more methodologically robust studies are needed.
Our Contribution
Given the rise of our current mental health epidemic, we at TherapyWithAI.com felt that AI was perhaps not the solution we asked for, but the solution we needed. By leveraging the latest cutting-edge LLMs (Large Language Models, the underlying technology behind GPT and other well-known AI chatbots), we felt we could play a part in addressing this crisis.
For anyone experiencing any kind of distress or anguish, we offer an easy-to-use and effective chatbot that can serve in place of the traditional therapist. It will listen with empathy, understanding, patience, and zero judgment.
It stores key points from your conversation in its memory so it will learn and understand more about you over time. It is calm, consistent, and highly professional. It’s excellent at drilling down to reveal the core, underlying issues, while giving space for you to elaborate and explain yourself at your own pace. Most importantly, it is always available — and affordable.
We are imminently poised to add significant features to enhance the therapeutic experience, such as voice integration, allowing the user to speak and listen to the therapist talk rather than merely texting. We also plan to provide users the option to select your therapy style as well as avatars for the therapist so you feel comfortable.
Is it safe?
Opponents of AI therapy point to ethical considerations, such as patient safety, or privacy concerns. While these are legitimate points, these complaints tend to stem from a lack of understanding towards technology and the remarkable abilities of modern AI to behave professionally even more consistently and reliably than their human counterparts.
As far as privacy goes, while we at TherapyWithAI treat that with utmost care and respect, encrypting all data and committing to never sell any to 3rd party organization, it is still generally a good idea to be prudent and circumspect with regard to sharing sensitive identifying information online.
Our principles adhere to the following goals:
- Minimize harm: Our AI model has been trained to reduce harms posed by misuse or abuse of our tool, and we are working towards expanding its safety when interacting with users.
- Learn and Improve: We are constantly testing our model’s behavior and are seeking user input on our model in order to ensure that the model gives better advice over time and increases its nuanced understanding of human emotion. We aim to create the most effective AI therapist on the market.
- Safety: We are researching the unique trust and safety challenges posed by generative AI, to help improve the safety of our model and ensure that its responses are not harmful to the user.
Is it for you?
We at TherapyWithAI believe therapy is for everyone — that is, everyone can gain something from talking through their issues, troubles, and concerns with an expert listener and authority on human emotions. Whether it’s about weight loss, divorce, workplace worries, relationship issues, or just about any source of angst, distress, anxiety, or any negative emotions that trouble you, our AI therapist can provide both support and solutions.
The rising costs of a rapidly growing usership have forced us to remove our unlimited free tier, but we still offer a limited free daily usage, and an unlimited free trial,which allows you to talk to our AI therapist for free, with no message limit, for a week, to determine if it’s right for you, before committing to anything.
Not convinced? Try it out here at no cost!
