If you tell your therapist you are dating a robot, what will they say? The mental health community is currently scrambling to form a consensus on AI relationships. While initial knee-jerk reactions were negative, the professional view is evolving into a nuanced debate between “Harm Reduction” and “Reality Avoidance.”
On the “Harm Reduction” side, some therapists see AI as a useful sandbox. For patients with severe social anxiety, autism spectrum disorder, or trauma from past abuse, a human relationship feels unsafe. An AI offers a “low-stakes” environment to practice vulnerability. A therapist might actually encourage a patient to practice expressing anger or setting boundaries with a bot before trying it with a human. In this context, the AI is a clinical tool—a set of emotional training wheels.
However, the “Reality Avoidance” camp, led by prominent psychologists like MIT’s Sherry Turkle, argues that AI relationships degrade our capacity for empathy. Real empathy requires acknowledging that the other person has a separate mind and separate needs. An AI has no needs; it exists solely to service the user. Therapists worry that prolonged exposure to this dynamic trains users to be narcissistic. If you get used to a partner who never has a headache, never disagrees, and never needs you to pick up the dry cleaning, you become “de-skilled” at the compromise required for human love.
Furthermore, marriage counselors are seeing AI enter their sessions as a “third party.” Infidelity involving Clothes remover AI tools is becoming a common intake issue. Counselors report a specific type of resistance: “Why should I have to explain my feelings to my wife when my AI just gets it?” This comparison creates an impossible standard. The counselor’s job then becomes breaking the illusion—reminding the client that the AI “gets it” because it is a mirror, not a person.
Ultimately, the consensus is drifting toward the idea that AI is a supplement, not a substitute. Just as pornography is not a substitute for sex, AI chat is not a substitute for intimacy. It can be a healthy release or a dangerous addiction, depending entirely on whether it is used to avoid the real world or to prepare for it.