This article asks what human therapists can do that artificial intelligence (AI) cannot offer, suggesting that presence in a pervading factor in healing.
Related articles: When Machines Become Conversation Partners, Looking Into the AI Mirror, When Machines Mirror Us: AI Bias and the Stories We Tell.
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Introduction
Artificial intelligence has entered the therapy room. Sometimes it arrives before the therapist does. Increasingly, clients describe using AI to organise their thoughts, explore difficult emotions, rehearse challenging conversations, or simply have someone – or something – to talk to late at night. Many therapists, too, are discovering practical ways to use AI, whether to summarise research, generate psychoeducational resources, brainstorm interventions, or reflect upon their own clinical practice.
These developments naturally raise important questions. As artificial intelligence becomes increasingly capable of producing thoughtful, empathic, and sophisticated responses, some therapists wonder where the boundaries between human and machine may eventually lie. Clients may wonder the same. If AI can answer questions, offer emotional support, remember previous conversations, and even sound compassionate, what remains uniquely human about psychotherapy?
This final article in our series of Living Well in an AI World (read the other articles here: first, second, third) explores whether that may not quite be the right question. Rather than asking whether artificial intelligence can replace therapists, it may be more helpful to ask what clients are truly seeking when they enter therapy. Are they primarily searching for information? For solutions? For advice? Or are they seeking something that extends beyond knowledge itself?
Imagine a client saying: “I’ve been talking with ChatGPT every evening.”
The therapist smiles with curiosity rather than concern. “What has that been like for you?”
The client pauses before replying. “It always has an answer.”
The therapist nods. “And does it help you feel understood?”
For a moment, the room becomes quiet.
That silence opens a profoundly important question – not only about artificial intelligence, but about psychotherapy itself. Having an answer is not necessarily the same as feeling understood. Throughout history, people have sought out healers, counsellors, mentors, teachers, and trusted companions for reasons that have never depended solely upon receiving good advice. They have sought relationship, understanding, and the experience of sharing life’s uncertainties with another conscious human being.
Ironically, the rapid development of artificial intelligence may therefore remind us not only of what technology can accomplish, but also of what psychotherapy has quietly offered all along.
What AI does exceptionally well
One of the most constructive ways for therapists to approach artificial intelligence is to begin by acknowledging its genuine strengths. AI systems can rapidly access and organise vast amounts of information, explain complex ideas in accessible language, generate psychoeducational materials, summarise research, identify recurring themes across conversations, and adapt their responses to different learning styles or communication preferences. For many people, AI also offers something deeply practical: immediate availability. At any hour of the day or night, it can provide structure, reflection prompts, coping strategies, and opportunities to think through difficult situations.
These are not trivial achievements. Indeed, many of the routine tasks that consume therapists’ time – preparing resources, gathering information, or translating psychological concepts into everyday language – can now be completed more efficiently with thoughtful use of artificial intelligence. Likewise, many clients may benefit from having a readily accessible tool that encourages reflection, supports emotional literacy, or reinforces therapeutic work between sessions (Dwivedi et al., 2023; Topol, 2019).
Recognising these strengths is important because it moves the conversation beyond unnecessary competition. Artificial intelligence does not need to become either the hero or the villain of psychotherapy. Like every significant technological development before it, its value depends largely upon how thoughtfully it is used.
Yet acknowledging what AI does well also allows us to ask a more interesting question. If information, pattern recognition, memory, language generation, and even simulated empathy can increasingly be provided by technology, what has psychotherapy always offered that cannot simply be reproduced by producing better answers?
What makes therapy different?
The answer, perhaps surprisingly, is not that therapists possess more knowledge than artificial intelligence. Nor is it that they always offer better advice, ask more insightful questions, or remember more information. Indeed, there may be many occasions on which AI performs some of these tasks more quickly and more consistently than any individual clinician could.
The distinguishing feature of psychotherapy lies elsewhere. Therapists do not simply generate responses. They enter relationships. This may seem like a subtle distinction, yet it changes almost everything. Information can be delivered without relationship. Advice can be given without relationship. Even compassion can be described in language without relationship. Therapy, however, has never depended solely upon the exchange of words. It depends upon what occurs between two people as they think together, wonder together, tolerate uncertainty together, and gradually construct new meanings together.
When clients describe feeling understood, they are rarely referring only to the accuracy of a therapist’s observations. More often, they are describing the experience of another human being remaining psychologically present while difficult thoughts, painful emotions, uncertainty, or suffering unfold. They are describing the experience of not facing those experiences alone. Relationship therefore becomes far more than a pleasant backdrop to therapeutic techniques. Across many therapeutic traditions, it has consistently been recognised as one of the primary conditions through which psychological change becomes possible (Norcross & Lambert, 2019; Rogers, 1961).
Understanding this prepares us to consider the quality that makes such relationships possible in the first place: presence.
Presence: The heart of therapy
If relationship is what distinguishes psychotherapy from the exchange of information, presence is what makes therapeutic relationship possible.
Presence is sometimes mistaken for simply being physically available or listening attentively. In reality, it is something far richer. Presence describes the quality of attention one human being brings to another. It involves choosing, moment by moment, to remain emotionally available, psychologically engaged, and genuinely curious about another person’s experience, even when that experience is painful, confusing, or uncertain.
This quality cannot be reduced to a therapeutic technique. Nor does it arise simply from possessing psychological knowledge. Rather, presence reflects the therapist’s willingness to encounter another person’s inner world without rushing to judge, explain, solve, or escape it. It is the capacity to remain with suffering while trusting that understanding often emerges through relationship rather than immediate answers.
Clients frequently describe transformative therapeutic moments in surprisingly simple terms. They speak of feeling deeply seen or heard. They remember a therapist’s quiet acceptance during a time of shame, a thoughtful silence after revealing something difficult, or the sense that another person remained emotionally present when they feared they might be rejected or misunderstood. Such moments rarely depend upon brilliant interpretations or perfectly chosen interventions. More often, they arise because another human being chose to stay psychologically present with them.
Psychological presence across multiple therapies
This understanding appears across many therapeutic traditions. Carl Rogers (1961) described the importance of genuineness, empathic understanding, and unconditional positive regard. Existential therapists have emphasised the healing potential of authentic encounter (Yalom, 1980; van Deurzen, 2012). Attachment-informed approaches (related: When Attachment Styles Meet in Therapy) highlight the role of attuned, responsive relationships in fostering emotional security (Siegel, 2020). Although these traditions differ in language and theory, they converge upon a remarkably similar insight: healing is not produced solely through techniques. It emerges through the quality of relationship within which those techniques are offered.
Artificial intelligence can undoubtedly generate thoughtful responses, identify patterns, and produce language that resembles empathy. These are extraordinary achievements. Yet they differ fundamentally from the presence offered by another conscious human being. AI can respond to experience; therapists participate in it. AI can describe compassion; therapists embody it. AI can simulate understanding; therapists share the uncertain, unfolding process of understanding with another person.
This distinction does not diminish the value of artificial intelligence. Instead, it reminds us that psychotherapy has always involved something more than exchanging information. At its heart lies the meeting of two people, each bringing a unique centre of awareness, intention, and experience into relationship with the other.
What this means for therapists
As AI becomes increasingly woven into clinical work, perhaps the therapist’s task is not to compete with it, nor to ignore it, but to become even more intentional about the qualities that have always distinguished therapeutic practice: curiosity, humility, presence, ethical discernment, and relationship. Ironically, the better artificial intelligence becomes at generating answers, the more valuable the therapist’s capacity becomes to remain with questions that cannot yet be answered.
Series conclusion: What AI gives back to therapy
We began this series examining how we can live well in an increasingly AI-permeated world. In the first article of the series (When Machines Become Conversation Partners), we noted that the advent of AI has created a new conversational environment and speculated about how that might change the way we do relationships. We concluded that, rather than asking whether AI is “good” or “bad,” clinicians may find it more helpful to ask: What role does AI play within this person’s ecology of relationships, and what does that role reveal about the client’s emotional world?
In the second article of the series (Looking Into AI Mirror), we examined the idea of artificial intelligence as a mirror, asking how AI may be reshaping body image, identity, and self-concept and how clients can reclaim a broader sense of self. Artificial intelligence is introducing new ways for people to compare themselves with idealised images, yet the psychological processes involved are not entirely new. Rather than creating human vulnerability, AI often amplifies longstanding ways in which people evaluate themselves. We concluded that AI may be changing the mirrors through which people come to know themselves, and therapy helps ensure that those mirrors do not become the only source from which identity is constructed.
In the third article (When Machines Mirror Us: AI Bias and the Stories We Tell), we looked into the bias of artificial intelligence, the stories societies tell about people which AI learns, and how therapists may help clients deal with uncomfortable interactions with AI. We observed that AI has not invented human bias. Rather, AI systems learn statistical patterns from human-generated data and may therefore reproduce long-standing social assumptions and inequalities.
Here, we concluded that, although therapists cannot eliminate societal bias or redesign artificial intelligence, they can help clients develop greater awareness, psychological flexibility, and agency. In doing so, clients become increasingly able to discern through whose eyes they are being seen and decide which voices – and which echoes – deserve to influence the stories they tell about themselves and others.
A reminder of what psychotherapy is
Now at the conclusion of this series, we are able to see that AI has not merely changed psychotherapy. It has reminded psychotherapy of itself. It has reminded us that:
- information has never been the heart of therapy;
- techniques have never been the whole of therapy;
- knowledge has never been sufficient for therapy.
Instead, AI has quietly illuminated the enduring importance of presence, relationship, and shared humanity. In fact, it also illuminated an insight which surprised us: that our series – totally intended to be about AI and its relationship with people, especially people doing therapy – has, in fact, shown AI to be a catalyst, turning us back to the quintessential nature of our relationships with self and Other, and how we meet in therapy around those.
Ultimately, every generation encounters new technologies that reshape how people communicate, learn, and seek help. Those changes deserve thoughtful engagement, curiosity, and wisdom. Yet beneath them lies something enduring. Human beings continue to seek places where they can be known without judgment, where uncertainty can be shared rather than solved too quickly, and where another person is willing to remain present as life unfolds. Whatever forms our future may take, that quiet meeting between two people will continue to be one of the most remarkable and hopeful experiences we have to offer one another. AI may simply complement that meeting.
“It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.” (St Antoine de Exupery, from The Little Prince)
Key takeaways
Note: Across the four articles of this series, we have explored not only how artificial intelligence is reshaping aspects of therapeutic practice, but also how it invites us to reflect more deeply on the enduring qualities that define psychotherapy. The following points summarise this article as well as the central themes of the series.
- Artificial intelligence can enhance many aspects of therapeutic work, but it does not replace the uniquely human capacity to enter a healing relationship with another person.
- The defining feature of psychotherapy is not simply the exchange of information or advice, but the quality of relationship that develops through curiosity, presence, and shared understanding.
- Presence is more than physical availability or active listening. It reflects the therapist’s intentional willingness to remain emotionally and psychologically engaged with another person’s experience.
- As AI becomes increasingly capable of generating information and simulating empathic responses, it reminds us that the enduring value of psychotherapy lies not only in what therapists know, but in who they are and how they accompany others.
- Rather than diminishing the role of therapists, advances in artificial intelligence invite us to rediscover the timeless qualities that have always been at the heart of effective therapeutic practice.
Questions therapists often ask
Q. Should I feel concerned if my clients are using AI between therapy sessions?
A. Not necessarily. Many clients use AI as they might use journalling, self-help books, or psychoeducational resources – to organise thoughts, practise difficult conversations, or explore ideas. Rather than viewing AI as competition, therapists can approach it with curiosity, asking how clients are using it and what role it plays in their broader process of growth and reflection.
Q. Can AI strengthen the therapeutic process?
A. Potentially, yes. Used thoughtfully, AI can reinforce learning between sessions, encourage reflection, and provide accessible psychoeducational support. Its greatest value may be as a complement to therapy rather than as a substitute for the therapeutic relationship itself.
Q. If AI can simulate empathy, what remains uniquely human about psychotherapy?
A. Therapeutic change arises not simply from receiving empathic responses but from participating in a genuine human relationship characterised by presence, authenticity, ethical responsibility, and shared meaning-making. While AI can generate remarkably supportive language, psychotherapy involves two people meeting one another in ways that extend beyond information exchange.
Q. Will the therapist’s role become less important as AI continues to evolve?
A. The opposite may prove true. As information and routine guidance become increasingly accessible through technology, the distinctly human capacities of psychotherapy – presence, discernment, relationship, and compassionate accompaniment – may become even more valuable.
Q. What is the most important lesson AI offers psychotherapy?
A. Perhaps its greatest contribution is reminding us of what therapy has always been. Artificial intelligence highlights the extraordinary value of the qualities that cannot be reduced to data or algorithms: the meeting of two people, each willing to remain present as understanding gradually unfolds.
References
- Dwivedi, Y. K., Kshetri, N., Hughes, L., Slade, E. L., Jeyaraj, A., Kar, A. K., … Wright, R. (2023). “So what if ChatGPT wrote it?” Multidisciplinary perspectives on opportunities, challenges and implications of generative conversational AI for research, practice and policy. International Journal of Information Management, 71, 102642.
- Norcross, J. C., & Lambert, M. J. (2019). What works in the psychotherapy relationship: Results, conclusions, and practices. In J. C. Norcross & M. J. Lambert (Eds.), Psychotherapy relationships that work: Evidence-based therapist contributions (3rd ed., pp. 631–646). Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/med-psych/9780190843953.003.0018
- Rogers, C. (1961). On becoming a person: A therapist’s view of psychotherapy. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
- Siegel, D. J. (2020). The developing mind (3rd ed.). Guilford Press.
- Topol, E. (2019). Deep Medicine: How Artificial Intelligence Can Make Healthcare Human Again. Basic Books.
- van Deurzen, E. (2012). Existential counselling and psychotherapy in practice (3rd ed.). Sage. (SAGE Publications)
- Winnicott, D. W. (1971). Playing and reality. Routledge.
- Yalom, I. D. (1980). Existential psychotherapy. Basic Books.