It’s hard to name my favorite with certainty, but one of my favorites is The Incredibles. The world building, the score, the action, the comedy, the relationships. It’s all great.

The stakes are very real too. Syndrome is willing to murder not just superheroes, but kids. When he orders Elasti-Girl’s plane shot down knowing it has her and Bob’s kids on board, you feel every bit of tension as Helen tries to stay calm while doing everything she can to save her kids. The scene is even more believable because the way she uses pilot jargon while speaking through the radio.

And the themes! Each main character’s power is tied to their role. Super strong Bob being weighed down with the crushing burden of mediocrity. Over functioning Helen has to stretch herself to take care of everyone. Super fast Dash has too much energy and resents being contained. Insecure Violet just wants to be invisible to the world. Even baby Jack Jack is just full of possibilities.

Honestly I could go on and on. It’s a movie that’s suitable for kids but has some very grownup themes and relationships. It hits different after you have kids, feeling what the parents are going through on a new level. To me it’s not just a great superhero movie, it’s just a great movie that most people can find something to relate to in.

I think that given human nature, there will certainly be some providers who overly rely on it. There are already therapists and other professionals who cut corners where they shouldn’t in a variety of ways. Probably the most common example of this is when therapists write bare-bones notes with practically no useful information to bridge one session to the next. That’s been happening since documentation was a legal requirement.

However, as always, any serious professional is going to take the time to do it right. They will understand how to use a tool effectively while keeping their skills sharp. In my field, with this tool, that would mean every note is read and edited so that it is truly useful. For example, editing the content of the note so that it can be interpreted through the therapist’s theoretical orientation.

I would hope that training programs and continuing education providers emphasize that any note they sign, including one generated by AI, is one that they are still legally responsible for. So it behooves them to always read it thoroughly and check it for accuracy.

With any new tool, certain skills will diminish but new skills will be developed. So writing skills may suffer, but good therapists will be good at editing and using effective prompts to get a good note.

Also, for what it’s worth, documentation skills and intervention skills are very different. I have known a few excellent therapists who were absolute shit at documenting. These therapists tend to be so naturally gifted and intuitive that they don’t need to document very well to be effective. And many therapists write very good notes but are mediocre at the actual therapy. So, at least for now, I tend to see the potential pros as outweighing the potential cons. That could change though!

I understand those concerns and I think there’s validity. But there’s also enormous potential for benefit.

I know of several therapists who are very good at being present with a client but terrible at documentation. And if one of these has a busy day or two it is easy to get behind. By the time they get around to writing the note the details are very fuzzy. Human memory is notoriously unreliable. A therapist I respect has said that if you’re writing a note 24 hours or more after the session, you’re probably writing fiction. A tool like this has the potential to greatly help the documentation process. But I agree that it should never become a replacement. I thoroughly read all my notes and often make edits to make them more relevant to me.

An attorney I know who specializes in representing therapists and regularly conducts legal and ethics trainings has also said that from a legal standpoint, when comparing human to AI generated notes, the AI notes are usually superior. They contain details like quotes and they automatically include all the stuff that matters for legal or insurance requirements. This attorney is VERY risk averse and honestly I thought she would have been against this, expecting horror stories like artifacts. Her opinion was a factor in me trying it out.

Again, I stress that this is a tool and not a replacement. When I read through a note, I am considering the things my clients said and my interventions to see if it matches up. It’s not perfect but it is very good and I’ve regularly been surprised with how helpful it can be.

I can’t know for certain, as I’m not on the product side of things. But I do know that HIPAA standards are very rigorous and if it were discovered that they were intentionally misleading therapists and clients then it would invite a class action lawsuit that would be insanely large.

I do ask for and document my clients’ consent, though, so if anyone is not comfortable with it that’s fine. I just write the note the old fashioned way. Most are fine but a few have said they don’t want to and it’s not a big deal.

Yes basically, but since it is HIPAA compliant the recording is automatically destroyed when the note is saved. Also no protected recordings are used to teach the AI. The therapist can also choose from a number of different case note formats that might focus on different things

I’m a therapist. I use HIPAA compliant AI to generate my (editable) case notes for my sessions now. Not only is it a huge time saver to simply edit a generated note as opposed to making one from scratch, but in many cases it takes more detailed notes, including quotes from clients.

I have heard of other therapists and medical doctors also using AI to help with diagnosing.

The danger is when therapistsdon’t review the content to check for accuracy. Because occasionally it will generate something not really reflective of what the therapist might have been doing, or it might lack detail that the therapist might have otherwise inclused. But more often the stuff it comes up with is surprisingly accurate.And editing is even easier when you can just tell the AI something like, “include more details about how the client noticed their pattern of putting their own feelings last,” and it just does what you asked. You don’t necessarily have to edit manually, though you can.