‘It cannot provide nuance’: UK experts warn AI therapy chatbots are not safe

Last week, ChatGPT’s owner OpenAI withdrew a version of its chatbot that had given ‘overly flattering’ responses to its users. Photograph: Anastasiia Yanishevska/Alamy

Having an issue with your romantic relationship? Need to talk through something? Mark Zuckerberg has a solution for that: a chatbot. Meta’s chief executive believes everyone should have a therapist and if they don’t – artificial intelligence can do that job.

“I personally have the belief that everyone should probably have a therapist,” he said last week. “It’s like someone they can just talk to throughout the day, or not necessarily throughout the day, but about whatever issues they’re worried about and for people who don’t have a person who’s a therapist, I think everyone will have an AI.”