Cooper, S., Ardlan, F., Gavazzi, J., et al. (2026).
A Report of the AI and Psychotherapy Work Group,
Society for the Advancement of Psychotherapy,
American Psychological Association, Division 29.
Executive Summary
Psychologists are already using artificial intelligence (AI) to draft progress notes, screen literature, generate case conceptualizations, and rehearse clinical skills with simulated patients. Technology has shaped professional psychology for decades, but no earlier development moved this quickly into so many parts of the work at once. A model can be given every word a patient has spoken and still have nothing at stake in what happens next. That disparity organizes the analysis in this report.
Emerging from the October 2025 SAP Board discussion of mega-level issues and opportunities for the Society for the Advancement of Psychotherapy, the Presidential Work Group on AI and Psychotherapy was established in 2026 by Society President Joshua Swift to examine AI’s implications for psychotherapy practice, supervision, education and training, and research. What follows is guidance from a Society work group. It is not APA policy and not a practice guideline.
The authors of the four domain sections worked independently and drew on different literatures. Their analyses converged: AI can substantially augment psychological work, but it cannot replace the human judgment, relationships, and accountability on which psychotherapy depends.
Six principles follow.
- AI augments rather than replaces humans.
- Human accountability remains essential.
- AI output requires critical evaluation.
- Implementation must be ethical and safe.
- Human relationships remain central.
- Continuous learning and governance are necessary.
Across all four domains the Work Group identified the same risks: automation bias, professional deskilling, cultural and demographic bias, threats to privacy and confidentiality, and overreliance on AI-generated recommendations. Beneath them sits a single concern. AI generates plausible interpretations from patterns in data, while psychotherapy requires understanding a particular person within a particular cultural, historical, and relational context. Pattern recognition can look like clinical understanding and be something else entirely.
The Work Group recommends evaluating any AI application against three questions: whether it enhances or erodes the human relationships the work depends on, whether it preserves psychologist accountability, and whether it respects the patient’s narrative integrity and cultural context. Evaluate a tool before it becomes embedded in practice, because a tool is far easier to decline than to remove.
Four practices follow. Psychologists should reason independently before consulting AI models whenever feasible, verify what AI produces, protect confidentiality in data handling, and review AI-assisted documentation before it enters a record.
Underlying these recommendations is a commitment to human dignity. Persons must not be reduced to data, classifications, or algorithmic predictions. The tools named in this report will be superseded and the studies cited will be replaced by better ones, but the question they raise will not date: what parts of psychological work can be augmented by technology, and what responsibilities cannot be delegated at all.
