There is plenty of excitement about AI and what it might do for our lives. Cultural commentators speculate about which jobs will be lost and which will survive. And increasingly, there is a serious suggestion that AI could help meet the enormous demand for mental health treatment, by making therapy more accessible, more affordable, and available around the clock.
It sounds appealing. But before we get carried away, it is worth asking a harder question: can a fake relationship, one with a bot that has no stake in you, no feelings about you, and no real experience of being human, actually help you heal?
The problem with fake relationships
Many people come to therapy precisely because their relationships feel fake. They perform a version of themselves at work, at home, with friends, carefully managing what others see, hiding the parts they are ashamed of. They are exhausted by the distance between who they really are and who they feel they have to be. Fake relationships, in this sense, are not just a symptom. For many people, they are the wound.
Therapists work with people who believe that if others truly saw them, they would be rejected. They support people who desperately want their friends and loved ones to really see them, not the curated, acceptable version, but the complicated, contradictory, fully human one. They help people make choices that reflect who they genuinely are, rather than who they think others want them to be.
Research backs this up. People who score highly for authenticity are consistently assessed as happier and more resilient. Authenticity, it turns out, is not just nice to have, it actively protects your mental health.
What therapy actually offers
So can you learn to be authentic from a bot?
An AI might be able to tell you the steps towards greater openness, the same way a self-help book could. But therapy is not primarily about information. It is about experience.
Therapy offers you the chance to rehearse what it feels like to be truly visible to another person, and to survive it. To share something shameful and feel accepted anyway. To say what you really want, without fear of judgement, and to have someone witness that without flinching. That experience of being genuinely seen and genuinely accepted is, for many people, transformative. It is what makes the change stick.
Can any of that happen with a bot? If there is no real person on the other side, someone who can be genuinely moved, genuinely surprised, genuinely present, is the experience of being seen actually real? Or is it, like ultra-processed food, engineered to feel satisfying whilst quietly failing to provide what you actually need?
The ultra-processed therapy problem
Ultra-processed food is designed to be convenient, cheap, and immediately palatable. It mimics the experience of eating without delivering the nutritional value of real food. You consume it, you feel full for a while, and then something is still missing.
AI therapy apps risk offering something similar: the shape of a therapeutic relationship without its substance. A simulation of being heard, without the genuine human presence that makes being heard meaningful. Reviews of therapy apps bear this out, they are, on the whole, not encouraging.
That does not mean technology has no role to play in mental health. It can be a useful first step, a way of tracking mood, or a low-pressure introduction to reflecting on feelings. But if you are struggling with fake relationships, if you feel unseen, disconnected, or unable to be yourself with the people in your life, you likely need something more than an app can give.
A real conversation
If any of this resonates, it might be time for a genuinely authentic conversation with a real person who is trained to help. The team at Octopus Psychology work with people every day who are finding their relationships feel hollow, or who feel unable to show up as themselves. We would love to help, get in touch.
