#35 – Avatar Therapy

Here we explore a direction in which Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology is being used to advance therapy. A brief video showed how a computer avatar could be used to help people diagnosed with schizophrenia, and who had been previously paralyzed by critical and debilitating voices in their head. By using the computer to generate an avatar voice with face image, the client could finally have a conversation with that ‘other voice in their head’. Apparently this method has shown to be very effective with people experiencing this condition. In the podcast group we discussed how such technology could be used in other areas of therapy including individual, couple, and family therapy.