Turning to ChatGPT for emotional support may not be the best idea for a very simple reason, according to OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. Speaking on a recent podcast appearance, Altman warned that AI chatbots aren't held to the same kind of legal confidentiality as a human doctor or therapist is.
“People use it — young people, especially, use it — as a therapist, a life coach; having these relationship problems and [asking] ‘what should I do?’" Altman said in a recent episode of This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von.
"And right now, if you talk to a therapist or a lawyer or a doctor about those problems, there’s legal privilege for it," he continued.
"There’s doctor-patient confidentiality, there’s legal confidentiality, whatever. And we haven’t figured that out yet for when you talk to ChatGPT.”
Altman points out that, in the result of a lawsuit, OpenAI could be legally compelled to hand over records of a conversation an individual has had with ChatGPT. The company is already in the midst of a legal battle with the New York Times over retaining deleted chats. In May, a court order required OpenAI to preserve "all output log data that would otherwise be deleted" even if a user or privacy laws requested it be erased.
During the podcast conversation, Altman said he thinks AI should "have the same concept of privacy for your conversations with AI that we do with a therapist or whatever — and no one had to think about that even a year ago.”
Are people using AI for therapy?
Earlier this year, Anthropic — the company behind ChatGPT rival Claude — analyzed 4.5 million conversations to try and determine if users were turning to chatbots for emotional conversations. According to the research, just 2.9% of Claude AI interactions are emotive conversations while companionship and roleplay relationships made up just 0.5%.
In the result of a lawsuit, OpenAI could be legally compelled to hand over records of a conversation an individual has had with ChatGPT.
While ChatGPT's user base far exceeds that of Claude, it's still relatively rare that people use the Chatbot for an emotional connection. Somewhat at odds with Altman's comments above, a joint study between OpenAI and MIT stated: "Emotional engagement with ChatGPT is rare in real-world usage."
The summary went on to add: "Affective cues (aspects of interactions that indicate empathy, affection, or support) were not present in the vast majority of on-platform conversations we assessed, indicating that engaging emotionally is a rare use case for ChatGPT"
So far, so good. But, here's the sting: conversational AI is only going to get better at interaction and nuance which could quite easily lead to an increasing amount of people turning to it for help with personal issues.
ChatGPT's own GPT-5 upgrade is right around the corner and will bring with it more natural interactions and an increase in context length. So while it's going to get easier and easier to share more details with AI, users may want to think twice about what they're prepared to say.
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