Clarity: CBT Self Help Journal

I’m really disappointed to see this app lean into AI. I used this app for two years a few years ago (very helpful at the time) and decided to redownload it while I’m between therapists. Extremely disappointed to see the team lean into AI, even if it is “CBT trained.” Still, I tried to dive into the AI journal a few days in a row. Extremely frustrating. Circular prompts and the classic very avoidant AI style. Using AI for therapy is extremely bad practice. Yes, it’s better that people are using an AI trained on CBT than OpenAI or similar LLMs but I worry this app will legitimize the idea of AI therapy—potentially leading to users to seek out more definite answers that other LLMs provide. This is extremely dangerous as we’ve started to see these effects: direct links to suicides, homicides, and psychosis. Ethics aside, I worry about privacy. I want to know more about the host LLM, which I could not find information on besides what is stated in the privacy policy: “Any AI features such as the AI Chatbot involves data being processed by third party vendors.“ Thus, it is fair to ask where this data is being stored and used. Who are these third party vendors? What are their privacy policies? Is their data encrypted? Inquiry Health LLC may not sell your data, but how are we to know if these third party vendors are beholden to the same? We need more transparency when using AI in medical apps.

This app has promise, and the idea of a Chatbot that can dialogue in a CBT framework is a very interesting concept. Thus far, it felt very rudimentary, just broadly rephrasing what I said, and then offering a brief blurb of context which was so broad and nonspecific as to be functionally useless. I will keep an eye on this, but so far it doesn’t seem particularly helpful.