Your clients are already using AI. Let's get the mental health professions ready.

There are now more people having conversations about their mental health with ChatGPT than there are clinicians in the entire NHS. ChatGPT has around 700 million weekly users, and around 342 million of those weekly conversations relate to relationships and personal reflection. OpenAI itself has reported that around a million users a week show signs of emotional reliance on the platform. Clinicians are encountering clients who are already in conversation with AI tools between sessions, often without disclosing it, and often without anyone in the room having considered what that means.

The AI in Psychology Summit grew out of Dr Esther Cole's BPS article on AI in private practice and the conversations that came with it: clinicians who knew they needed to engage with this but weren't sure where to start, and who wanted something more substantive than the hot takes circulating on social media. The questions this raises about safeguarding, ethics, bias, regulation, and the nature of therapeutic work itself are not going to wait until we are ready for them. This summit is our answer: a day of grounded, clinician-led conversation about what AI is doing in our practice now, what the risks and possibilities genuinely are, and what it means for the mental health professions to face this honestly.