Artificial intelligence looks set to change almost every area of our lives in the coming years, and the discipline of psychology is no exception. From chatbots to research data analysis, we take a look at some AI-driven innovations in the field.
Making psychotherapy more accessible and affordable
There are currently simply not enough therapists to meet mental health service provision needs: in 2021, the Royal College of Psychiatrists reported that 1.5 million people in England were waiting for treatment while a tenth of psychiatry posts were vacant. In psychology practice, the use of AI therapeutic chatbots may offer a partial solution, by making therapy more accessible and less expensive.
What’s more, AI technologies such as tools for automatic note-taking, AI systems for administrative tasks, and more intelligent training and interventions offer promise for easing the day-to-day burden on clinicians. Natural language processing tools such as Eleos can listen to sessions, take notes, and highlight themes and risks for practitioners to review.
AI-powered chatbots have already been incorporated into some mental health care apps in the USA, while in the UK a handful of AI tools that have undergone comprehensive testing are being used for initial screening and assessment of patients.
Such chatbot mental health apps support people around the clock with texts and instant messages. They can mimic conversations with a real person, help users challenge negative thoughts, and engage them in evidence-based therapy techniques such as mindfulness.
As apps are readily available and low cost, this has potential to make mental health support more affordable and accessible. Chatbot apps can also help harder-to-reach people such as those with social anxiety or people who might be reticent to visit a therapist.
One chatbot app example is Woebot, which uses machine learning to generate “predictable responses” using techniques from Cognitive Behavior Therapy and other psychotherapy approaches. Through Woebot, users can access psychoeducation and self-guided interventions for anxiety and depression, substance abuse, postpartum depression, relationship issues and more.
But chatbots cannot, at least not yet anyway, safely replace professional help from a psychotherapist. Large language models such as ChatGPT have clear limitations: for example, they don’t always understand what the user is expressing.
What’s more, they can’t be used for clinical decision-making. Decisions involving mental health need complex, context-based human judgement that AI isn’t yet equipped to handle, says Ian MacRae at the British Psychology Society.
There are, of course, ethical considerations, too:
“The risks of improper use are very high and the outputs of current large language models are too unpredictable for this application without human intervention,” say experts in a 2025 Nature review article on generative AI in psychology.
So trust in these systems, as well as keeping a ‘human in the loop’, are both essential. One example of a halfway house is the Wysa chatbot, which doesn’t use generative AI, but limits interactions to statements drafted or approved by human therapists. The app delivers cognitive behavioral therapy for anxiety and chronic pain, and can be used as a stand-alone tool or integrated into traditional therapy, where clinicians can monitor their patients’ progress between sessions.
Turbo-powering training
Advancements in generative artificial intelligence can give psychology students deeper learning experiences and valuable opportunities to practice their skills on ‘virtual patients’. AI models can create natural language conversations, emotional simulations, and virtual interactions that are just like talking to real people, realistically simulating psychological disorders and emotional responses. This can give students authentic practice experiences of diagnosing mental health conditions without any risks to real patients.
Personalised learning experience platforms are another exciting AI development in training for psychology students, which have been shown to boost students’ engagement and outcomes. They generate customised learning content and exercises according to an individual student’s progress and needs, using adaptive learning AI algorithms that adjust content difficulty and type in real time based on how well the student is doing.
AI can further be used to measure what’s working well in therapy sessions and to identify areas for improvement for trainees. For example, natural language models could search through hours of therapy sessions and spot missed opportunities such as neglecting to ask key questions like whether a suicidal patient has a firearm at home.
New insights into the human mind
One of the biggest breakthroughs is in psychological research, in which AI is unlocking and analysing huge datasets on human behavior and human intelligence.
Machine-learning research is evolving rapidly thanks to vast increases in computing power and 21st-century data sources, including social media, smartphone data, and crowd-sourced research tools such as Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk). So while the mainstay of studying human behaviour used to be small-scale lab experiments and self-reporting, now research psychologists can use AI to monitor things like social media activity, credit card spending, GPS data, and smartphone or apple watch metrics. Suddenly researchers can see individual differences in our behaviour as they play out in real time, in daily life.
Researchers can also use deep learning—a machine learning application that interprets big data and carries out pattern recognition — to glean new insights from all of that data. Computer models with access to the vast tranches of data available can join the dots and even come up with research questions and concepts that haven’t yet occurred to humans. Furthermore, Mechanical Turk can recruit people around the world to psychology studies at the touch of a button, making huge time and cost savings compared with traditional research studies.
Several university labs now exist focusing specifically on the use of machine learning. For instance, the University of Colorado Boulder’s Institute of Cognitive Science houses experts in psychology, computer science, neuroscience, linguistics, AI research and other disciplines and aims to modernise the study of human cognition. And Stanford University’s Computational Psychology and Well-Being Lab uses social media data and machine learning algorithms to examine health and psychological issues.
Like it or not, AI is here, and it will pay dividends to embrace the opportunities it presents.
“A lot of people get resistant, but this is something we can’t control. It’s happening whether we want it to or not,” says Dr Jessica Jackson, a licensed psychologist and equitable technology advocate based in Texas. “If we’re thoughtful and strategic about how we integrate AI, we can have a real impact on lives around the world.”
Explore the inner worlds of our human brains
If you’re fascinated by the science of human behaviour, the University of Wolverhampton’s 100% online MSc in Psychology could be for you. Our British Psychological Society (BPS)-accredited course is for students who may not hold an undergraduate psychology degree but want to move into a psychology or psychological research career. And because it’s part time and online, you can fit the course around your family and work commitments and study at your own pace.
The MSc course has been designed closely with industry partners to equip you for a wide range of roles in psychology and related disciplines, whether your passion is exploring cognitive psychology, gaining deeper insights into schizophrenia and autism, or psychology in the context of social sciences. The course provides students with both a breadth and depth of scientific knowledge of human behaviour from a range of different psychological perspectives and it is unique in its integrated approach: you’ll also gain transferable and practical skills that will broaden your career opportunities in a dynamic job market. Find out more.