Artificial intelligence is increasingly becoming part of clients' lives, yet many therapists report hearing little about it directly. Some clients use tools such as ChatGPT for emotional support, reflection, journalling, problem-solving, or exploring difficult conversations. Others may develop an ongoing relationship with an AI companion. Frequently, these experiences are disclosed only after a therapeutic relationship has become established, suggesting uncertainty about how such conversations will be received.

Alongside this, supervisors are beginning to encounter new questions in supervision. Practitioners may bring accounts of clients arriving with printed transcripts of AI conversations, seeking validation of AI-generated insights, or describing significant emotional connections with AI systems. Therapists themselves may experience curiosity, scepticism, anxiety, admiration, or even a sense of being displaced by a technology that appears to offer unlimited availability and responsiveness.

This workshop explores AI not as a replacement for therapy, but as a new presence entering the therapeutic and supervisory space. Drawing on participants' experiences and observations, we will consider how AI use can be understood through familiar therapeutic lenses, including attachment, relational patterns, dependency, avoidance, self-reflection, and meaning-making.

Particular attention will be given to the supervisory implications of this emerging phenomenon. How do we support practitioners when AI becomes part of the therapeutic narrative? What ethical and professional questions arise? And how can we remain clinically curious about the significance of AI in a client's life, rather than becoming preoccupied with the technology itself?

At the heart of the workshop is a deceptively simple question: when a client brings AI into therapy, what might they be communicating through that act?

This interactive session invites therapists and supervisors to reflect on an evolving area of practice and to develop greater confidence in engaging with AI-related material in thoughtful, ethical, and clinically informed ways.

Description supplied by the event organiser.