Subjective evaluation of "humanity" and "empathy" in responses is much less important than clinical outcome. I don't think an online chat with a nebulous entity will ever be as beneficial as interactions that can, at least occasionally, be in-person. Especially as the trust of online conversations degrade. Erosion of trust online seems like a major negative consequence of all the generative AI slop (LLM or otherwise).
Clinical outcome of humans doing therapy would be better if for some reason doing therapy worse (less according to taught guidelines) was better. But, sure, we can wait for another research or follow up. It might be true. Therapy has dismal outcomes anyways and the outcomes are mostly independent of which theoretical framework the therapy is done according to. It might be the case that the only value in therapy is human connection that AI fails to simulate. But it seem that for some people it simulates connection pretty well.
