AI therapist

An AI therapist (or therapist chatbot) is an artificial intelligence system designed to provide mental health support through chatbots or virtual assistants.^[1] While AI therapists improve accessibility, they are not a substitute for human professionals due to their lack of emotional intelligence.^[2] Due to LLMs tendency towards sycophancy they can also fail to provide corrective therapy and endorse destructive behaviours.^[3] The earliest example of an AI which could provide therapy was ELIZA, released in 1966, which provided Rogerian therapy via its DOCTOR script.