AI Vs. Therapy for Low Libido: I Put It To The Test

AI is being turned to as a replacement for therapy. As a sex therapist who specialises in low libido, I wanted to know - can it actually help with something as nuanced as low sex drive in a marriage?So I put it to the test. I pretended to be a typical client of mine - a woman in a long-term relationship, struggling with low desire and shame around her turn-ons - and turned to both a trained mental health bot and ChatGPT to see what they got right, what they got wrong, and what most people would never notice was missing.We look at what the research says about AI's accuracy in sexual & mental health, why feeling understood isn't necessarily the same as actually being understood, and where AI genuinely helps versus where it might make things like low libido and relationship issues worse.In this episode, we explore:What the research reveals about how AI chatbots actually perform on sexual health and therapy scenariosThe results of my own experiment pretending to be a client struggling with low sex drive and shame around what turns her onHow AI tends to over-validate, skip the questions a sex therapist would ask, and offer solutions before it knows youHow AI can sneakily reinforce the very patterns that create low desire and sexual problems in marriage in the first placeWhen AI is a useful thought partner for relationship and sex issues, and when it falls short of what real therapy does02:44 - My Bias as a Therapist (Let's Be Honest) 06:13 - What the Research Says: AI Chatbot Studies 08:20 - The Experiment: Testing an AI Therapy Bot 11:46 - Test 1 – The Mental Health Bot 13:24 - Test 2 – ChatGPT 20:04 - What ChatGPT Got Wrong 22:03 - Why AI Can't Replace the Therapeutic Relationship 25:54 - AI vs. Self-Help Books: Is It the Same? 31:24 - Final Takeaway: When AI Helps & When It Falls Short Today's studies:Evaluation of Artificial Intelligence Chatbots for Providing Sexual Health Information: A Consensus Study Using Real-World Clinical QueriesPublished in BMC Public Health in 2025.A Comparison of Responses from Human Therapists and LLM-Based ChatbotsPublished in JMIR Mental Health in 2025.The Ability of AI Therapy Bots to Set Limits With Distressed AdolescentsPublished in JMIR Mental Health in 2025.Interested in my services? Check them out hereJoin my 1:1 online program Re:Desire here.Do you want to submit a listener question for the podcast? Here's the link