Can AI therapy replace human connection? Experts weigh in

Those imperfections—the therapist who pauses awkwardly, the missed cue, the flawed response—can be deeply therapeutic. “For anyone who grew up under pressure to be perfect, the realness of a human therapist can actually be corrective,” says Donahue.

For Gen Z, however, turning to tech is second nature. “They grew up with devices as a fifth limb,” says Alyssa Petersel, a licensed social worker and founder of MyWellbeing. The pandemic, too, trained this generation to rely on screens for connection. In that context, AI therapy doesn’t feel like a compromise—it feels intuitive.

But that intuition can be risky. Younger users are developmentally more vulnerable and more likely to trust confident responses, even when those responses come from a machine. In extreme cases, this has had tragic consequences. Two Texas families recently filed a lawsuit against Character.AI after their children’s interactions with AI chatbots led to devastating outcomes.

Even outside those extremes, there are concerns. “You’re losing the muscle to reflect and decide for yourself,” Petersel says. “AI therapy is persuasive, but not always contextual. And young people often don’t yet have the internal scaffolding to filter that.” Older adults, by contrast, often bring more scepticism to their interactions with tech.

That doesn’t mean AI is devoid of value. “We need to honour the benefits while understanding the risks,” says Pharaon. AI can rapidly synthesise documents, process journal entries and offer frameworks for reflection. Petersel offers a real-life example: uploading pages of stream-of-consciousness writing and asking the bot to summarise what she seems to believe.

But even the best AI therapy apps are only as good as the prompts they receive. Advice to “take a walk” or “call your dad” might seem supportive—unless your street is unsafe or your family dynamic is fraught. “The tech can’t always know what’s safe or emotionally appropriate,” says Petersel.

A recent study published in PLOS Mental Health found that people could rarely tell the difference between ChatGPT and human therapists, and often rated the AI responses higher. While that’s significant, it also raises questions about what kind of connection we’re measuring. “It’s not just about sounding smart,” says Donahue. “It’s about being seen.”

Ultimately, AI therapy might offer helpful tools, but it’s not a replacement for the messy, layered work of being in a relationship with another person. “AI shortchanges people from the beauty of growing through human connection,” says Donahue. “We need people. Period.”