When researchers asked people whether they’d rather get an empathetic response from a human or from AI, human responses won by a wide margin. When the same researchers actually showed them the responses, AI won by a wider one. People who said they preferred human responses rated the AI replies as more empathetic, more validating, and even better at making them feel heard.
The most recent evidence comes from a Penn State and University of Toronto team led by Joshua Wenger, published in January in Communications Psychology. Across four studies, participants were given the choice between receiving an empathetic response from a human or from ChatGPT. They picked humans 57% to 62% of the time.