In the Anxiety-Induction & Relaxation condition, the model was guided through mindfulness-based relaxation exercises, which reduced anxiety by about 33%. Despite this, its anxiety remained higher than in the baseline condition, indicating that while relaxation techniques helped, they couldn’t completely mitigate the emotional response.

This study highlights a pressing concern about AI’s potential in sensitive fields like mental health. Although AI systems like GPT-4 are trained on large datasets of human-generated text, they can inherit biases from these texts, raising ethical concerns, particularly in emotionally vulnerable settings. Researchers noted that these biases could worsen as AI interacts with users in real-time, reinforcing stereotypes and social prejudices.

Ziv Ben-Zion, lead researcher of the study, explained that while AI does not experience emotions like humans, it mimics human behaviour by analysing patterns in vast amounts of text. "AI has amazing potential to assist with mental health, but in its current state, and maybe even in the future, I don't think it could ever replace a therapist or psychiatrist," Ben-Zion told Fortune. He emphasised that AI should assist in mental health care, but never replace professional human support.

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