Are chatbots the new relationship experts? Insights from three studies

Abstract

Relationship distress is among the most important predictors of individual distress. Over one in three couples report distress in relationships but despite the distress, couples only rarely seek help from couple therapists and instead prefer to seek information and advice online. The recent breakthroughs in the development of humanlike artificial intelligence-powered chatbots such as ChatGPT have recently made it possible to develop chatbots which respond therapeutically. Early research suggests that they outperform physicians in helpfulness and empathy in answering health-related questions. However, we do not yet know how well chatbots respond to questions about relationships. Across three studies, we evaluated the performance of chatbots in responding to relationship-related questions and in engaging in a single session relationship therapy. In Studies 1 and 2, we demonstrated that chatbots are perceived as more helpful and empathic than relationship experts and in Study 3, we showed that relationship therapists rate single sessions with a chatbot high on attributes such as empathy, active listening, and exploration. Limitations include repetitive responding and inadequate assessment of risk. The findings show the potential of using chatbots in relationship support and highlight the limitations which need to be addressed before they can be safely adopted for interventions.