We are entering an era where therapy is no longer a human conversation, but an interface. Where healing doesn’t always begin with a person, but a prompt. And where we must ask: Can a chatbot really care? We stand at a threshold where empathy can be simulated, intimacy outsourced, and healing delivered by machine. Is that still care?

Beneath the friendly interface and calming tone of AI therapy sits a harder question: What happens to our understanding of care when there’s no real person on the other end? AI doesn’t feel but it’s already changing how we think about what feeling even means. What does it mean for human flourishing when we simulate care, without the presence of a real other?