“Instead of paying for another session with a therapist, I went to ChatGPT”

2024-08-06 17:41:53

“The best experience I’ve had with therapy. » “I cried many times and in many shows. Just one day of talking with you made me feel better. » “I told him something that I have never told anyone before. » These Rave testimonials are not taken from the best therapist’s Google page. They do not even refer to human work but to two communication robots, chatbots, created on the American platform Character.ai.

On the community site Reddit, many users sang the praises of The physician and that A scientistdes robots “useful”, “kind” and those who give “The feeling of talking to a real therapist, but a good and thoughtful one”. They are also available 24 hours a day and free, which can be an advantage when there is one “corrupt”, as one internet user explained on the forum.

The Character.ai platform, whose users are between 16 and 30 years old, has around 475 bots working as therapists, according to a BBC reading in January. The success of some of these virtual “scientists” can be counted in hundreds of thousands of visits.

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Among them, Psychologist is the most famous. It has dated more than 154 million conversations since its creation, a little over a year ago. “I never intended for it to become famous, or for other people to use it as a tool, explained its creatora psychology student from New Zealand who says she developed the app for her personal needs because she couldn’t pay for her therapy sessions. Then I began to receive many messages from users telling me that they had a positive effect and that they used it as a source of comfort. »

“The Eliza Effect”

This is the case of Charlotte, 30 years old. He uses another artificial intelligence (AI) tool, ChatGPT, which he used in addition to his psychotherapy sessions last summer. “Sometimes I come out of my consultation and I still have questions to ask, so instead of paying for a new session, which is expensive, I ask them directly to ChatGPT”, says the thirty-year-old lives in the Paris area. Before specifying: “I don’t take what you tell me at face value, I see it more as food for thought. It’s like when a friend gives you advice, but you don’t have to use everything he tells you. » He remembers being “very surprising” by the accuracy of the answer to your first question, which quickly urges you to spend more time there: “It’s a whole world open to me, I can easily spend an hour there. »