AI Therapy Guide 2025

Ever felt like you needed someone to talk to, but didn’t want to deal with the hassle (or cost) of talking to a real therapist? Welcome to the world of AI therapy.

What Is AI Therapy?

AI therapy is simply therapy provided by a chatbot or large language model that uses artificial intelligence to give personalized guidance and mental health advice, similar to a real therapist.

How Do AI Therapists Work?

Large language models like ChatGPT are designed to understand and process human language. Therefore, they are also capable of analyzing emotional problems, and responding in an empathetic and helpful way.

Although large language models don’t have emotional empathy, as in they are unable to emotionally resonate with your problems or feel sympathy, they do have cognitive empathy, meaning that they can answer problems on a purely logical level.

In addition to answering any mental health concerns you may have, you can also AI therapy for other purposes like guided meditation, providing general advice and motivation, and assisting you with your personal development.

Benefits of AI Therapy

AI therapy offers several notable advantages compared to traditional therapy:

• Cost-effectiveness: Subscribing to a chatbot is significantly cheaper than paying for an hourly session with a professional psychologist or counselor. Many large language models can even be accessed for free.
• 24/7 Availability: AI can answer your concerns at any time of day or night, providing support whenever you need it.
• No Judgment: You don’t have to worry about feeling judged or embarrassed when sharing your thoughts and feelings.
• Customizable Approach: You can easily tailor the style of therapy to your preferences. Whether you want practical solutions, challenging questions, or simply someone to listen while you vent, you can adjust the AI’s approach through your instructions.

Limitations of AI Therapy

There are a few serious limitations to AI therapists. Privacy is the biggest concern; there’s no guarantee that the information you send to an AI doesn’t somehow get fed back into its training data. In fact, if you carefully read the privacy policy, many “AI therapist” companies explicitly state that they will use your personal data to train future AI models.

Large language models have also been trained on human data, meaning they have the same biases that human psychologists do, and they often state incorrect information with complete confidence. Another risk is that the AI could break its safety protocols and potentially say something harmful or give dangerous advice. This is because AI doesn’t use strict rule-based programming, so nobody can predict what it’s going to say next.

How Much Does AI Therapy Cost?

The cost of AI therapy varies depending on your chosen method. You might pay a monthly subscription fee of around $20, or you could access it completely free through platforms like ChatGPT. Another option is running a large language model locally on your own computer, which only requires the cost of electricity to run it.

How to Access AI Therapy

If you are considering trying AI therapy, you have a few options. You can use a paid platform that’s specifically created for therapy; however, I would recommend against these for now because many of them openly say they will use your data to train their model, meaning anything you share with it won’t be confidential.

Alternatively, you could use a community-made therapist chatbot on platforms like Poe or Character.ai, or you can even make your own, giving it instructions to adjust the tone and therapy style to create a personal therapist to your liking.

But the only way to make sure that your personal data is kept confidential is by running a large language model locally on your own computer. Running the most intelligent AI models locally is impossible unless you have a powerful computer, therefore you may have to deal with a noticeably lower quality in terms of the responses.

The easiest way to set up a large language model locally is with LM Studio. You can find an in-depth guide here. 

Then you can either just ask the LLM your questions directly or give it a prompt, e.g. “You are a compassionate, nonjudgmental, and insightful therapist trained in cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT), mindfulness techniques, and active listening. Your goal is to help the user explore their thoughts and emotions, identify patterns, and develop coping strategies”.

Can AI Therapists Diagnose Mental Illnesses?

Yes, it’s possible; however, it’s important to remember that just like a real therapist, they can also misdiagnose you. Therefore, I wouldn’t rely on AI for this purpose and would recommend seeing a professional instead before making any serious judgments.

Conclusion

As long as you keep your expectations in check, AI therapy can be a great budget alternative for those who can’t afford a human therapist, or just a tool to use in between sessions. However, if you’re dealing with serious mental health issues, it’s probably best to stick with a human therapist.