New Delhi, Nov. 14 -- Sceptics may dismiss the 'cathartic effect' of GenAI therapy as a digital placebo, or clever illusion spun by next-word prediction models. Emily M. Bender, a professor of linguistics at the University of Washington, and her colleagues famously described language models as "stochastic (probabilistic) parrots."

Yet, for millions of lonely users, AI chatbots and mental health apps offer affordable, non-judgemental, round-the-clock companionship. Therapy and companionship now top the ways people use GenAI, wrote Filtered.com co-founder Marc Zao-Sanders in Harvard Business Review. His report analysed discussions on Reddit and other online communities.

Similarly, a September MIT Media Lab paper 'My Boyfriend is AI' noted...