What People Felt While Using It

The numbers in a study can hide what really happened. So I want to slow down here and look at what daily use actually looked like.

A real amount of writing

The students who used the AI did not just open the app and close it. They used it.

On average, each student sent about 19 messages a week to the AI (Shoshani et al., 2026). That is about three messages a day. They wrote about 1,645 words a week. That is roughly four pages of writing per week.

They used the app about three days a week. They spent about 83 minutes a week on it. That is more than an hour, less than an hour and a half. About six in every ten students were still using the app when the study ended.

This was not a quick try. This was twelve weeks of real conversation. People were writing about their feelings, often, on most days.

The finding I keep thinking about

The researchers asked the students to rate two things about the AI. How warm did it feel. How skilled did it seem.

They asked the same questions to the students who saw real human therapists.

The scores were almost the same. Warmth was rated about 3.86 out of 5 for the AI and about 3.74 out of 5 for the human therapists (Shoshani et al., 2026). Skill was rated about 3.85 for the AI and about 3.93 for humans. The differences were so small that they could be by chance.

I keep coming back to that. Not "the AI was as good as a therapist." That is not what was measured. What was measured was the feeling people had while using each one. The feeling of being heard. The feeling that the other side knew what it was doing.

People felt about the same way about the AI as they felt about the humans.

The technical name for this

There is a name for the feeling that you are working together well with a therapist. It is called therapeutic alliance, which means the sense of being a real team with the person helping you.

In this study, the researchers borrowed the name and used a new word. Digital therapeutic alliance. The same kind of working relationship, but with a tool instead of a person (Shoshani et al., 2026).

The study found that students who felt this alliance with the AI used it more. And the more they used it, the more they got better. The path was clear. Feeling close to the tool led to using it. Using it led to feeling better.

What this is not saying

I want to be careful here.

This is not saying the AI is the same as a human therapist. It is not saying the AI is alive, or thinking, or really cares. The students knew they were talking to a computer.

It is saying something more subtle. It is saying that the feelings of trust and being heard that we used to think only happened with humans, can also happen with a careful tool. The feelings are real. The other side of the conversation is software.

That is a strange new thing for our world to hold.

The next chapter is about the part of the study that made me uncomfortable.

References

Shoshani, A., Gurfinkel, B., Kor, A., et al. (2026). Efficacy of a Conversational AI Agent for Psychiatric Symptoms and Digital Therapeutic Alliance: A Randomized Clinical Trial. JAMA Network Open, 9(4), e266713.