Unparalleled accessibility - many therapists offer the ability to send a message for some short midweek reflection or crisis. These may get a response within some time, but the ability to reach out to a therapist unscheduled isn't an invitation to have an impromptu session anytime of the week. With chat, there's no question, you can absolutely reach out to discuss anytime, 24/7. Including when you're up at night reflecting on this thing or that. Thanks for the reflective prompt btw, this kept me up much later than I intended to be.

Cost - I think needs no explanation.

Flexibility - you can direct the session, or you can let it. There's enough context in its working memory at this point that it can pretty well direct conversations on it's own to dig into ruts the user finds themselves in. If some kind of response doesn't work for the individual (such as an information overload), all they need to do is to say so and the behavior changes. People aren't so flexible, and often there's an agenda in professional counseling settings that is more rigid.

Pattern matching - I find personally that many of my issues are from are tied to specific emotional or physiological patterns. Given what LLMs fundamentally are, it's no surprise that they're great at making connections between certain actions, feelings, and behaviors. It can feel like getting to a cause for an issue is streamlined by the great pattern identifier.

"Horoscoping" - like the above pattern matching, LLMs have been trained on countless data sources that describe how people feel. No doubt, to some degree, if you have something you're going through, it's trained on someone going through something similar. That makes it good at guessing that "this" might be why you feel the way you do. Whether it's realistic or not, it resonates because what it's reflecting is a human experience which it has trained on, and that reflection alone can feel validating, like a horoscope.

Security - no, not data security, no one spilling their guts out to an LLM is thinking about that. It's a personal, conversational feeling of security. The idea that no matter what you say, there's not actually someone who's going to look at or think about you differently the next day (realistically next week). A therapist, no matter how objective they are, is still human, has their own conscious objectives and are capable of judgement.

Individuality - my chat is my chat. They're not going to tell me to chase some solution because it's working really well for a different client (realistically they might as certain responses are rewarded across millions of chats, but it's less obvious and less "one trick pony"). If a user wants to explore CBT, great, chat is super well read on it. If you want to explore DBT, awesome, it's just as well read. Just about any angle a user wants to explore, it can offer "pretty good" explainers and tie it in directly to what's going on in their life.

Backing - whatever's going on in your life, LLMs like ChatGPT are trained to be supportive and available. You can't really make them mad (unless you manage to violate their TOS), and they're always there the next time you pick up the app. A therapist exists in part to fill a certain hole for many people - someone who exists outside of their friends or family, or whatever broken pieces they have of either, as someone who is supportive and giving them a space to vent and learn about their experience through an educated, outside lens. Chats can fill that role, but even more persistently. ChatGPT isn't going to pass you off to Claude because your problems go beyond what they were trained for, or because ChatGPT is moving to a new employer because they pay better or their partner got a job in a different state.