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Journal of Medical Internet Research, 27, e89202.
On November 18, 2025, a congressional hearing was held in Washington, DC, by the US House Energy and Commerce’s Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, examining the risks and benefits of artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots.
Marlynn Wei, MD, JD; Jennifer King, PhD; and John Torous, MBI, MD (director of digital psychiatry at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical School and associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School) provided expert testimony at the congressional hearing. I sat down with Torous to discuss his reflections on the future of AI in mental health.
An Inflection Point
Following on the heels of several lawsuits and mounting concerns about the safety of commercially available AI chatbots and their widespread “off-label” use as psychological support, November’s congressional hearing was somewhat anomalous—in a good way.
“I actually am optimistic,” says Torous, “because we never saw a congressional oversight committee form in the early days when social media came out or when apps came out or when VR [virtual reality] came out. It’s exciting to see a body like Congress taking the time and attention to try to understand what the issue is.”
He remarks that it’s a different trajectory than we’ve seen over the past 25 years of digital health innovation, one that simultaneously signals that “we’re seeing the end of AI exceptionalism in mental health.” It suggests that regulators are taking the risks seriously and that AI—whether purpose-built or used de facto—will not be exempt from the same scrutiny applied to other clinical tools.
It’s also a potential inflection point from the otherwise rapid and underregulated growth and proliferation of AI tools for mental health, including many chatbots whose safety and efficacy remain to be definitively established. The shape of the trajectory now—whether these tools succeed or fail to materialize their potential for improving mental health care—depends on what we do from here.
The information is here.
Key Takeaways
- The future of artificial intelligence (AI) tools in mental health care is at an inflection point; regulators are taking both the potential benefits and the risks of these tools seriously.
- Whether these tools succeed or fail to meet their potential for improving mental health care depends on the extent to which stakeholders are able to successfully seize the moment and collaborate on transparent, high-quality research; establish and incentivize safety and efficacy; adopt patient-centric benchmarks; and think beyond traditional therapeutic models.
