psAico

An AI assistant for psychological wellbeing, built on evidence

Large language models (OpenAI’s GPT) can be instructed to help you explore how you feel, with psychoeducation, self-help strategies and practical tools drawn from CBT (cognitive behavioural therapy). Researchers have been studying this use of AI for several years, and psAico is built on what they have found.

Italy’s National Council of the Order of Psychologists, in a post published on 15 May 2025, made the point well: artificial intelligence “cannot replace the human psychologist”, but it can “promote wellbeing, collect and monitor data, share information”. That is exactly the spirit of psAico. It offers psychological help, not psychotherapy: it builds awareness, explains cognitive behavioural techniques and strategies that support wellbeing, and brings people closer to psychology and psychotherapy instead of standing in for them. It can also sit alongside therapy you are already having, for example by helping with what CBT calls homework, the exercises a therapist sets between sessions. So it can be useful both if you are not seeing anyone and if you are already in treatment. In that second case, it is always worth telling your therapist that you are using it.

To read more about the cognitive behavioural approach, the NHS explains what CBT is, how sessions work and how to refer yourself to NHS Talking Therapies at this link.

What the research says so far

Research on AI assistants for psychological wellbeing is young and moving fast. Here is what the studies have measured, with the numbers and the sources: it is the clearest way to show what psAico rests on.

Effectiveness

Real effects, measured in thousands of people

A systematic review with meta-analysis published in npj Digital Medicine brought together 39 randomised controlled trials of chatbots for mental health. Across more than 7,400 participants for depression and 7,600 for anxiety, the chatbots produced statistically significant reductions in symptoms compared with control groups.

The effects are small in size, no digital tool replaces psychotherapy and psAico does not claim to, but they are real and replicated, and they are clearer in people who start from more intense distress. For a tool designed to be there alongside people day by day, that is a good place to start.

Staying with it

A tool people actually keep using

In a randomised controlled trial with 540 adults with symptoms of anxiety or depression, a cognitive behavioural therapy app built on generative AI was compared over six weeks with digital workbooks. The people using the app came back to it 2.4 times more often and stayed 3.8 times longer, with the same clinical results and the same safety profile.

This is the figure that matters most to us: a tool you drop after three days helps nobody. Analyses from the same trial also found that people who used the personalisation features saw a larger reduction in anxiety and better overall wellbeing, which is exactly the direction psAico is designed for.

Design

Why a clinical project matters, not just any chatbot

A systematic review published in JMIR AI looked at 20 psychological counselling chatbots built on language models. The most instructive finding is not how well they hold a conversation, but how few of them say how they were validated, what safeguards they have in place and how they handle the safety of the people using them.

That gap is exactly where psAico starts: created and trained by cognitive behavioural psychologists and psychotherapists, with a stated limit on use, clear guidance for emergencies, a minimum age and a privacy policy written for a psychological setting. Between a generic chat and a service that has been designed, the whole difference lies there.

“The results indicate that the development of AI in understanding emotions and social behavior related to social intelligence is very rapid. AI will help the psychotherapist a great deal in new ways. The psychotherapist needs to be aware of possible areas of further development of AI given their benefits in counseling and psychotherapy.”

Sufyan NS, Fadhel FH, Alkhathami SS, Mukhadi JYA - Artificial intelligence and social intelligence: preliminary comparison study between AI models and psychologists, Frontiers in Psychology, 2 February 2024.

In that 2024 study, ChatGPT-4 scored higher on a social intelligence scale than every one of the human participants: a striking result, and a measure of how quickly these models are learning to recognise emotions and social behaviour.

We report it precisely, because rigour is part of the project: it was a preliminary study, the comparison involved 180 counselling psychology students at a single university, and it measured social intelligence, not the effectiveness of a treatment. It is a strong signal about the direction of travel; the evidence on effectiveness is in the research above.

We are constantly researching and developing, and the direction is clear: the future of psychotherapy, like the future of most of what we do, will involve artificial intelligence. Our commitment is to use AI ethically and thoughtfully.

psAico was created in 2025, at a point where artificial intelligence (AI) is already widespread and more and more patients and professionals are turning to AI chats for help and support. The purpose of psAico is to make that use informed, healthy and ethical, with limits and in a way that makes the most of the technology safely.

The studies cited on this page:

  • Sohn JS, Ha BG, Park S, Kim JJ, Lee E, Oh H, Lee S, Kim E. Systematic review and meta analysis of chatbots in the management of depressive and anxiety symptoms. NPJ Digit Med. 2026 Mar 25;9(1):377. doi: 10.1038/s41746-026-02566-w. PMID: 41882250.
  • McFadyen J, Habicht J, Dina LM, Harper R, Hauser TU, Rollwage M. Increasing engagement with cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) using generative AI: a randomized controlled trial (RCT). Commun Med (Lond). 2026 Jan 15;6(1):129. doi: 10.1038/s43856-025-01321-8. PMID: 41540194.
  • Cho HN, Wang J, Hu D, Zheng K. Large Language Model-Based Chatbots and Agentic AI for Mental Health Counseling: Systematic Review of Methodologies, Evaluation Frameworks, and Ethical Safeguards. JMIR AI. 2026 Mar 13;5:e80348. doi: 10.2196/80348. PMID: 41592221.
  • Sufyan NS, Fadhel FH, Alkhathami SS, Mukhadi JYA. Artificial intelligence and social intelligence: preliminary comparison study between AI models and psychologists. Front Psychol. 2024 Feb 2;15:1353022. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1353022. PMID: 38379623.

A good deal of research has looked at the use of AI in mental health. These are some of the studies that inspired us:

  • Fisher CE. The real ethical issues with AI for clinical psychiatry. Int Rev Psychiatry. 2025 Feb;37(1):14-20. doi: 10.1080/09540261.2024.2376575. Epub 2024 Jul 30. PMID: 40035378.
  • Raile, P. The usefulness of ChatGPT for psychotherapists and patients. Humanit Soc Sci Commun 11, 47 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-023-02567-0
  • Kolding S, Lundin RM, Hansen L, Østergaard SD. Use of generative artificial intelligence (AI) in psychiatry and mental health care: a systematic review. Acta Neuropsychiatr. 2024 Nov 11;37:e37. doi: 10.1017/neu.2024.50. PMID: 39523628.
  • Monteith S, Glenn T, Geddes JR, Whybrow PC, Achtyes ED, Bauer M. Implications of Online Self-Diagnosis in Psychiatry. Pharmacopsychiatry. 2024 Mar;57(2):45-52. doi: 10.1055/a-2268-5441. Epub 2024 Mar 12. PMID: 38471511.
  • Saqib H; Sumyia; Saqib A. AI Chatbots And Psychotherapy: A Match Made In Heaven? J Pak Med Assoc. 2023 Nov;73(11):2321. doi: 10.47391/JPMA.9608. PMID: 38013574.
  • van der Schyff EL, Ridout B, Amon KL, Forsyth R, Campbell AJ. Providing Self-Led Mental Health Support Through an Artificial Intelligence-Powered Chat Bot (Leora) to Meet the Demand of Mental Health Care. J Med Internet Res. 2023 Jun 19;25:e46448. doi: 10.2196/46448. PMID: 37335608; PMCID: PMC10337342.
  • Holohan M, Buyx A, Fiske A. Staying Curious With Conversational AI in Psychotherapy. Am J Bioeth. 2023 May;23(5):14-16. doi: 10.1080/15265161.2023.2191059. PMID: 37130403.
  • Sun J, Dong QX, Wang SW, Zheng YB, Liu XX, Lu TS, Yuan K, Shi J, Hu B, Lu L, Han Y. Artificial intelligence in psychiatry research, diagnosis, and therapy. Asian J Psychiatr. 2023 Sep;87:103705. doi: 10.1016/j.ajp.2023.103705. Epub 2023 Jul 22. PMID: 37506575.
  • Monteith S, Glenn T, Geddes J, Whybrow PC, Achtyes E, Bauer M. Expectations for Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Psychiatry. Curr Psychiatry Rep. 2022 Nov;24(11):709-721. doi: 10.1007/s11920-022-01378-5. Epub 2022 Oct 10. PMID: 36214931; PMCID: PMC9549456.
  • Pham KT, Nabizadeh A, Selek S. Artificial Intelligence and Chatbots in Psychiatry. Psychiatr Q. 2022 Mar;93(1):249-253. doi: 10.1007/s11126-022-09973-8. Epub 2022 Feb 25. PMID: 35212940; PMCID: PMC8873348.
  • Wiese W, Friston KJ. AI ethics in computational psychiatry: From the neuroscience of consciousness to the ethics of consciousness. Behav Brain Res. 2022 Feb 26;420:113704. doi: 10.1016/j.bbr.2021.113704. Epub 2021 Dec 4. PMID: 34871706; PMCID: PMC9125160.
  • Fiske A, Henningsen P, Buyx A. Your Robot Therapist Will See You Now: Ethical Implications of Embodied Artificial Intelligence in Psychiatry, Psychology, and Psychotherapy. J Med Internet Res. 2019 May 9;21(5):e13216. doi: 10.2196/13216. PMID: 31094356; PMCID: PMC6532335.

Clinically reviewed on 26 July 2026 by Dr Michele Facci, psychologist and psychotherapist - Ordine degli Psicologi della Provincia Autonoma di Trento (Italian register of psychologists) - no. 844.

Dr Michele Facci

Innovation and research

psAico comes out of the team at the psychology practice of Dr Michele Facci in Italy, a practice with a long record of professional innovation and research.

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