This therapist helped clients feel better. It was AI.

A conversation with Therabot, a generative AI therapist developed by researchers at Dartmouth College, in a screenshot provided by Dartmouth College. In the first clinical trial of its kind, an AI chatbot eased mental health symptoms among participants. The technology may someday help solve the provider shortage. — Dartmouth College via The New York Times

The quest to create an artificial intelligence therapist has not been without setbacks, or as researchers at Dartmouth thoughtfully describe them, “dramatic failures”.

Their first chatbot therapist wallowed in despair and expressed its own suicidal thoughts. A second model seemed to amplify all the worst tropes of psychotherapy, invariably blaming the user’s problems on her parents.