Whatever your view of AI, I’d suggest it’s not too much to ask that when you’re talking to your therapist you’re actually talking to your therapist — and that when they’re talking to you, it’s actually them talking to you.

I’ve included the small icon (via notbyai.fyi) at the bottom of my website as an indication that I take seriously the importance of transparency around the use of artificial intelligence in counselling and psychotherapy.

This page is intended to offer a brief guide to how I do and don’t (but mainly don’t) use AI in my work.

Website

I was inspired to add the Not By AI button to my site after noticing how much AI content was working its way into therapist websites, profiles and blogs.

I want my clients to know they’ve met ‘me’ when they encounter me in online spaces like directories and this website, so none of the text on my website or directory profiles has been written by or created using generative AI. The same goes for the images, although that’s a little more complicated if you get into the weeds of it — my phone’s camera uses computational photography to process photos, for example, and my graphics software uses an AI algorithm for resizing images.

From time to time I’ll use AI to help me figure something out (for instance, when I needed to work out how to make the button on the homepage launch a booking popup instead of linking to a normal page). If I run adverts online (such as through Google Ads), most of the optimisation process seems to use AI too.

Communications

I don’t use AI to write, rewrite or edit any of my communications with clients. I don’t use artificial intelligence to respond to emails or in any sort of ‘virtual PA’ capacity.

Some notifications (like booking confirmations or out-of-office responses) are generated automatically, but this is all done in much the same way it would have been done twenty years ago rather than by using AI.

Therapeutic work

I don’t put confidential client information into AI services, and I don’t use AI as a replacement for supervision.

I don’t use AI to record, transcribe or summarise sessions. (I don’t record or transcribe sessions at all.) Where possible I do my best to ensure that services like Zoom, which I use for most of my online sessions, have any such options turned off.

At the time of writing it seems as if most services and platforms are attempting to crowbar AI into their offerings; I continue to monitor these developments and any impact they may have on therapeutic work.

From time to time I use AI to explore psychotherapeutic themes and ideas, and to help with research on topics I want to explore further. I’ll generally use Gemini and NotebookLM for this. Both are Google services that are set not to use my interactions for learning, apparently.

So how about your use of AI?

I’m more than happy for clients to discuss their use of AI, in relation to therapy or anything else in their lives, and discussions around this can lead to some interesting and helpful territory.

If you’re using AI before or during our work together, I’d hope you’ll feel comfortable discussing that with me, but only if you want to.

Or, to put it another way, the presence of this page simply reflects my wish for transparency, and I hope it doesn’t leave you with a sense that AI is somehow off-limits in my therapeutic work.

If you’ve got any questions about any of this or would like to discuss further, just drop me a line.