AI-Therapy has been the platform's name since 2012. Back then, "AI" meant something narrow and specific: adaptive, rules based logic that personalized clinician written CBT content to each person's answers.
It was not a chatbot, and nothing was generated on the fly. Almost nobody was asking what that distinction meant at the time.
In 2026, everyone is asking. The current wave of AI branded wellness apps has made the name AI-Therapy sound like something it has never been: an AI generated substitute for a therapist. Every word inside AICBT's programs is still written in advance by a licensed clinical psychologist. The technology only ever decides which of those pre written words a given person needs next.
That distinction is not just branding, it shapes real outcomes. A 2025 study from MIT Media Lab and OpenAI found that higher use of an open ended chatbot like ChatGPT correlated with more loneliness, more emotional dependence, and less time socializing with actual people. That is the risk built into any tool designed to hold a free flowing, ongoing conversation with you. AICBT's programs are not that. There is no open ended chat to grow attached to, and no dynamically generated responses that can drift or blur the line between the program and a relationship. The technology's only job is choosing which pre written, clinically reviewed piece of content a person needs next, inside a structured program with a defined beginning and end.
We talked about renaming it. In the end we kept the name, and decided to be much more explicit about what it actually means instead. The full story, including the 2009 papers on bridging the gap between Eliza and genuine online CBT, is on the original post.