Professor Deirdre Ahern:

We had a symposium in Trinity College last week and we had some guest speakers from the DCU school of psychology who were actually speaking a little bit on that subject. It was interesting what they were saying. On the one hand, people will say it is helpful to have greater access to therapeutic interventions or maybe pseudo counselling etc., and they will say that because it can be very difficult and there are cost barriers to accessing that. On the other hand, some people in the profession are resistant to it and they are worried that you need controls on the type of advice that is given as these are possibly vulnerable individuals. That is why the AI Act has controls around certain aspects of these types of things. I also find it useful getting those positive messages, such as get up and move because you have not been moving. It just depends. It seems that there are lots of people relying on them for a certain amount of companionship. It is a changing society. It might seem odd to us but it is just one of those things that seems to be changing. Those who are in the professions like psychology, etc., are also engaging with it but they do not have one uniform view yet on what their take is. It very much depends on the intervention. You hear some horror stories of the things it might suggest to you. It very much depends on what it is.