People are increasingly using Artificial Intelligence tools to discuss their feelings and relationships.
Family counselling group Interrelate, in a statement released today, said that 28 percent of Australian adults admitted to being “emotionally vulnerable” with a chatbot.
Usage of mental health apps had surged post-COVID and search data showed increasing queries around “AI relationship advice” and “ChatGPT breakup advice”.
Interrelate Relationship Counsellor Scott McLennan said, despite this trend, no algorithm could replace human to human relationships.
“Human relationships are lived, embodied experiences,” he said.
“They involve tone of voice, pauses, tears, silence, nervous laughter, eye contact, and the fragile act of saying something difficult while another person sits across from you.
“While artificial intelligence can be helpful, it may also oversimplify, or reinforce, complex emotional dynamics.”
Mr McLennan said there was a time when relationship advice came from a small circle, but that was changing with technology.
“(Previously) we turned to our mothers, our best friends, the agony aunt in the weekend paper, we listened to talkback radio, swapped stories over wine, or found ourselves crying in the car to Taylor Swift, convinced she alone understood our heartbreak,” he said.
Mr McLennan said there were clear reasons why people were turning to tools like ChatGPT for relationship advice.
“It’s immediate, and private, it doesn’t judge or interrupt, and it doesn’t take obvious sides,” he said.
“When emotions are high and conversations feel overwhelming, AI can provide a calm, structured response.
“In those early stages of reflection, AI can have value. AI is very good at language-based tasks. It can help people organise what they’re thinking, consider different ways to phrase something, or explore broader relationship concepts.”
Mr McLennan said it was important to understand the crucial difference between information and intervention.
“AI provides information while counsellors provide intervention, this distinction really matters,” he said.
“AI doesn’t think, it doesn’t feel and it doesn’t understand context beyond what it’s told. It cannot see body language, sense fear or detect power imbalances; it can’t read what isn’t being said.
“In complex relationships, that matters.”
Interrelate described itself as a “not-for-profit provider of relationship services, supporting healthy human connection across all stages of life”.
