Can a Chatbot Be Your Therapist? A Study Found 'Amazing Potential' With the Right Guardrails

Your future therapist might be a chatbot, and you might see positive results, but don't start telling ChatGPT your feelings just yet. A new study by researchers at Dartmouth found a generative AI tool designed to act as a therapist led to substantial improvements for patients with depression, anxiety and eating disorders -- but the tool still needs to be closely watched by human experts. The study was published in March in the journal NEJM AI. Researchers conducted a trial with 106 people who used Therabot, a smartphone app developed at Dartmouth over the past several years. It's a small sample, but the researchers said it's the first clinical trial of an AI therapy chatbot. The results show significant advantages, mainly because the bot is available 24 hours a day, which bridges the immediacy gap patients face with traditional therapy. However researchers warn that generative AI-assisted therapy can be perilous if not done right. "I think there's a lot yet for this space to evolve ... Read full article.