Shrink-bots! Can Al be your new therapist?

Despite the panic over artificial intelligence, new therapy chatbots may well be crucial aides to mental health services

- Kate Wills

I’M LYING on a couch talking to a therapist. I am telling them about the anxious thoughts that keep me up at night, the feelings of frustration that I have at work, and the general malaise that sometimes makes it hard to motivate myself. “Oh, Kate, I imagine this must be really difficult for you,” is the response. In many ways it’s a typical therapy session, except for one crucial detail — my therapist isn’t a person, it’s an AI chatbot. One called Woebot, to be precise.

The idea that therapy has to happen between two people in the same room has changed. During the pandemic we saw the rise of Zoom therapy, and apps which offer text therapy by trained counsellors such as BetterHelp and Talkspace (recently valued at $1.4 billion). Digital mental health has now become a multi-billion-dollar industry and includes more than 10,000 apps, ranging from guided meditation (Headspace) to mood tracking (MoodKit).

But now a handful of apps such as Woebot, which launched in 2017, are using AI to provide a version of cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT). You can play CBT games on an app called Happify, which encourages users to “break old patterns”, and you can create an “AI companion” who is “always by your side” on Replika.