Therapists are using AI to take notes. Is it a useful tool or a breach of trust?

A growing number of mental health therapists are using AI tools to record sessions, take notes and do administrative tasks. Fiordaliso/ hide caption toggle caption Fiordaliso/ For two years, Molly Quinn trusted her therapist with things she hadn't told anyone else. So when her therapist mentioned trying an artificial intelligence tool to take notes, Quinn didn't immediately refuse. The 31-year-old librarian from Fayetteville, Ark., asked to research it first. She wanted to understand where her words would go — whether they would stay local or be processed somewhere in the cloud. Replaying the session in her head The session moved on that day, but halfway through, Quinn noticed something was different. "She wasn't taking notes like she usually did," Quinn says. "The iPad was just propped up." That's when Quinn realized the session was being recorded. Quinn says she froze for a bit. But then she kept talking. It wasn't until she walked out of her therapist's office that the weight of it landed. "The more I thought about it, the more I just started getting more and more sick to my stomach," she says. "This person who I'm supposed to be able to trust with some very private and very intense emotions had just completely disregarded something I said I was not comfortable with. I felt completely violated." She drove home replaying the session in her head, unsure what to do next. …