In the past couple of years, artificial intelligence (AI) has become an increasingly common part of everyday life. From answering basic questions to helping people complete more complicated tasks, AI chatbots have become a necessary part of many people’s everyday lives and have made information more accessible than ever before. However, one of its more complicated uses is providing emotional support. People are beginning to turn to AI chatbots when they feel anxious, lonely, depressed, or feeling like they need extra support. Instead of reaching out to a friend, family member, or therapist, they may open a chat and share thoughts they have been keeping to themselves. Reaching out to an AI chatbot may seem like a reasonable solution. AI is available at almost any time, responds immediately, and allows people to discuss personal struggles without worrying about another person's reaction. For someone who feels uncomfortable expressing their emotions, a chatbot can provide a convenient place to begin talking. If you request it, AI can sound very human. Its responses may sound thoughtful and reassuring, making the interaction feel personal. For those who, for different reasons, find therapy to be inaccessible or difficult to initiate, talking to an AI chatbot may present as a convenient way to receive support. But convenience does not necessarily mean that something is capable of providing the support a person really needs.
There is one key characteristic that differentiates an AI chatbot from a human in their ability to provide therapy: Empathy. There is a major difference between receiving a comforting response and being understood by another human being. Although AI can recognize emotional language through its algorithm and generate words that resemble compassion, it does not experience the emotions it shares and it is not able to empathize with a person’s experience. Outside of empathy, there is another important part of therapy that AI cannot fully replicate: the therapeutic relationship. Therapy is not only about receiving advice or being told how to manage difficult emotions. It involves building trust with another person and developing a sense of safety by creating a relationship in which someone feels comfortable exploring their most personal experiences. Although AI can imitate that support, the relationship between a therapist and a client develops through human interaction and continued work together towards clients' goals.
The Difference: Sounding vs. Being Empathetic
One of the reasons AI has become appealing as a source of emotional support is its ability to communicate in ways that feel human. A chatbot can acknowledge someone's sadness, offer reassurance, and suggest ways to cope with a difficult situation. It may respond with phrases that make a person feel heard. In some situations, these interactions can provide temporary comfort and help people organize their thoughts. Empathy involves attempting to understand another person's perspective, recognizing their emotional experience, and responding with care. AI generates responses based on learned patterns and the information available to it. It can identify expressions of sadness or anxiety and produce language that sounds compassionate, but it does not personally experience concern for the person on the other side of the screen. This difference becomes especially important when considering what people need and gain from therapy.
When someone seeks professional help, they are not always looking for an immediate solution to their problems. Sometimes, they need time to understand their emotions and explore experiences they have struggled to discuss. A therapist helps guide this process by listening, asking questions, and reflecting the individual's experiences rather than simply providing a general answer. Empathy involves more than recognizing emotional language; it also requires understanding the person's perspective and responding appropriately to their needs (Rubin et al., 2024). The difference is not that a therapist can provide better advice than Chatgpt or other AI chatbots. It is that the therapist and client can develop an ongoing relationship in which the person feels comfortable being honest about their experiences. A chatbot may provide an appropriate response in one conversation, but therapy involves understanding a person's difficulties across multiple conversations and working with them toward meaningful change. This ongoing process is difficult to replace with a system that generates responses based on patterns in language.
Importance of the Therapeutic Relationship
The therapeutic relationship, often referred to as the therapeutic alliance, is the relationship that develops between a therapist and their client throughout the therapeutic process. It involves trust, collaboration, mutual understanding, and agreement about the goals of therapy. Rather than being a simple interaction in which one person gives advice and the other receives it, therapy requires both the therapist and client to work together. The client brings their experiences, concerns, and personal goals, while the therapist uses professional knowledge and understanding to help them explore these concerns and make progress. A strong therapeutic relationship can be an important part of effective treatment because it gives clients a space in which they can speak openly without feeling that they need to hide their emotions or present themselves in a particular way. For many people, discussing painful experiences can be difficult especially when those experiences involve shame, guilt, trauma, or fear of judgment. Developing trust with a therapist takes time, and that trust can help clients feel more comfortable in exploring thoughts and feelings they may not have felt comfortable discussing with anyone else.
Unlike an AI chatbot, a human therapist benefits from an ongoing relationship with the client as they can pull from previous conversations and are able to recognize differences such as changes in a client's behavior or emotions. A therapist may notice when a client seems uncomfortable, becomes unusually quiet, or avoids a particular topic and these observations can create opportunities to explore what is happening beneath the surface. While AI can respond to information explicitly shared through the chat, it may miss important contextual clues or misunderstand what a person is trying to communicate. Effective therapy can also sometimes involve challenging conversations, difficult questions, and confronting patterns that a person may have spent years avoiding. A therapist must balance compassion with professional judgment and helping clients feel supported while encouraging them to consider new perspectives. An AI chatbot designed to be agreeable or reassuring may not consistently provide this balance. If it validates a person's assumptions without examining them, it could reinforce unhelpful beliefs instead of encouraging meaningful reflection.
AI is not a licensed therapist. AI is not governed by a credentialling body overseeing evidence-based care from a qualified professional. Use of AI in the context of mental health challenges can be dangerous to the individual seeking support.
About the Author
Elizabeth Termilus, CMHCI, is a Clinical Mental Health Counseling Intern at BreakFree Therapy Services, providing counseling support to clients in Fort Myers, Florida, and throughout Florida through online therapy. She takes a compassionate, person-centered approach to counseling and is passionate about helping clients better understand themselves, explore their identities, and develop a deeper sense of meaning and purpose.
Elizabeth works with clients to create a supportive space where they can explore their experiences, values, relationships, and goals without judgment. She is especially interested in helping clients develop greater self-awareness, navigate life transitions, and better understand what is meaningful to them.
Reviewed By: Jenesis Vasquez, LMHC/ Maria Oritz, LMHC, CEDS
Sources:
Chung, L. L., & Kang, J. (2023). “I’m Hurt Too”: The Effect of a Chatbot’s Reciprocal Self-Disclosures on Users’ Painful Experiences. Archives of Design Research, 36(4), 67–85. https://doi.org/10.15187/adr.2023.11.36.4.67
Ho, A., Hancock, J., & Miner, A. S. (2018). Psychological, relational, and emotional effects of Self-Disclosure after conversations with a chatbot. Journal of Communication, 68(4), 712–733. https://doi.org/10.1093/joc/jqy026
Rubin, M., Arnon, H., Huppert, J. D., & Perry, A. (2024). Considering the role of human empathy in AI-Driven therapy. JMIR Mental Health, 11, e56529. https://doi.org/10.2196/56529