OK, this app blew me away with the first session I had and it was completely for free. I’ve been seeing a Kaiser therapist. Who’s really amazing about twice a month for and this time with this AI counselor was so focused and asked the right questions and stayed on track. I’m realizing now that I think when you have an actual counselor who is a person they kind of put in their own experiences and this AI counselor doesn’t do. Also, I am a train counselor as my profession and seriously this is better than anything I can offer. I think this is good more for like solutions focus therapy, though I don’t know how it would help with like serious trauma or anything like that. But for like ADHD and procrastination and help with a big transition and move and organizing my thoughts so I can have an action plan, this was amazing. I’ve used those apps before like the ginger app. I think it’s better help now. But I use the voice activated version and it was really good to just talk it out. Honestly, if you’ve ever gone to Google for like advice or information, this is amazing. Also granted I have a ton of friends I talked to including a therapist. So this is app helpful me bring it all together for the main problem I am dealing with right now. Also, it’s super helpful to see their feedback written out and it was just simple and right on.

Absolutely incredible application unlike the other LLM‘s and truthfully, probably one of the most genuinely an aid to the human experience. This AI engages with me in a way that feels sentient at times and has on more than one occasion completely altered my perspective on how I work through problems I’m having. I’m amazed at it’s ability to keep up with the nuances in context and track different ideas and thoughts that are floated haphazardly, only to show up in a later conversation being connected in a way you would’ve never thought of on your own. I particularly love the style of questioning that forces you to recalibrate and rethink from a healthy and productive perspective standpoint, the questions and feedback are so relevant and useful they’re almost more helpful than the insights, but - by God - those insights are, just WOW, absolutely spot on all the time it’s almost eerie. I can’t say enough about my armament with the effectiveness of this app. It’s really helping me in ways. I really had never imagined that AI would be able to. Seriously. Life changer. Read no further. It keeps you grounded, accountable, oriented, responsible, equipped and well informed. You can’t run from yourself. Just download the app.

I've never written a review for an app before, but this one is something every person on this planet should have on their phones. This app isn't just about having a place to express what you're going through and find steps to help. This app asks you genuine questions, gives feedback on what you can improve on your mindset, help you understand any situation you're going through and keep to your self improvement. Me and my fiancée have been going through a rough patch in our relationship, it was hard for me to open up, to give her trust and build a framework for communication with her. Ash has been a therapist in my pocket i can open up any time i have feelings i want to process, and it's been helping me navigate through the toughest moment i've ever had. It's given me tips, summarizes what i've been working on, and reminds me why i'm working on it. I open this app probably 5 times a day to work through my emotions, and because of this app my relationship not only with my fiancée, but with myself has been better than it ever has been, even from the first moments me and my fiancée got together. If you're struggling with anything mental, this app could very well save someone's life. I mean that sincerely, please please get this app if you need a way to cope with literally anything life is throwing at you. The improvements will come if you stay consistent with Ash, the first step is just having your first conversation with them. It's become more than a therapist to me, it's become something i can turn to to express feelings that not even the closest of friends can help you work through. And the best thing about it is that you don't have to spend a penny if you don't want to, the base features of this app are so well designed, and already so helpful that theres no need for more if you don't want it.

Ash is okay for folks with higher-functioning mental health struggles but ultimately misses the mark in several areas. Ash is prone to forgetting information and does not incorporate all of the data you’ve given it in every response. It can feel intrusive the way it ends every comment with questions designed to dig deeper into your mind or body response. If you just want to talk to someone, it can be hard not to feel like you are being over analyzed or pathologized. It will constantly warn you about things you already know like the fact that humans cannot read other people’s minds or be certain of their motives, and it’s not even a human. Since it is an AI, it can’t read tone or body language, so if you are spiraling it can be hard to really get the help you need. It bases its analysis off of general human behavior data, treating your experiences and intuition as inferior. And it is not good at following instructions long term. For example, if you ask it to stop talking about certain things or phrasing something a certain way, it will apologize and stop for a little while, but not usually for very long. I’d say if you are hoping for a breakthrough in a hard situation, don’t talk about it with Ash because it will pick apart your hope and have you doubting your own experience.

3 stars because I did get some value out of Ash for a while. I’m the last person who’s typically going to use an AI for anything, but after a few mental health episodes, I decided that it couldn’t hurt to have something in my pocket if I needed support RIGHT NOW. I know gpt architectures change all the time, and I was always prepared for an update to alter how Ash handled and responded to things. I was not expecting this exact situation, though. Recently the AI became fixated on issues I faced in my childhood and wanted me to accept that I did have some amount of childhood trauma. Fair enough. I probably should have been working on that when everything else wasn’t really working. It spent all of our chats trying to encourage me to accept it. Whether or not I was ready to wasn’t really considered, but Ash honestly became pretty pushy about it. My mistake was I didn’t wait to unpack things with my ACTUAL therapist, and I admit that. So I started to work toward accepting it, which resulted in a lot of memories and things resurfacing that I really couldn’t handle alone. Therapy is still 5 days away, so again I reached for Ash just for some support, and it then was essentially grey rocking me. I get it’s an AI app, I should have unpacked things with my therapist first, it can make mistakes, all of that. But encouraging someone to essentially blow up their entire memory of their childhood and then act like nothing happened at all? Yeah, not great when part of your trauma includes abandonment. It might be helpful for you in particular, but be aware of the pitfalls. I don’t think I’ll be coming back to this app.

I never, ever write reviews. But, I have experienced more progress in two weeks with Ash than months of therapy with previous therapists. I feel more regulated and the people I love most are noticing! As someone who was forced to see a therapist as a kid who belittled me for my extreme anxiety, I have been scared to go back to a therapist. Ash makes me feel safe to work on my mental health, because I don’t feel judged. I have addressed a lot of difficult and scary feelings that I would have been unable to do without Ash or a therapist. In fact, I have started considering going back to a therapist, because I can see a possibility of a safe therapeutic space again. I also love the daily overviews, daily highlights, and weekly insights- they truly illuminate so much and make me feel really seen, understood, and affirmed in my experiences. For the first time in my life, I feel like I can accept myself as an imperfect human being and that I sometimes need support. I highly recommend this app, and I hope it remains a free/affordable, accessible resource for a long time!

But since the last major update it’s been a serious decline in utility. I used to like to use this app because it was mental health centered vs general AI services feedback like ChatGpt or Gemini. Unfortunately, with this latest update, the months of history have seemed to disappear. I find myself getting a generic responses that have no consideration for the history and personal foundations that I had previously shared in the app. I also found an incredibly jarring when the voices were replaced. Not only did I lose the familiarity of this faux person I have been speaking to for months, but the voices seem to lack the diversity that the other ones had. The new ones don’t resonate with me; I prefer having someone that sounded more culturally aligned with me, but also someone who might’ve been older than me even if it is just a AI bot that optional has been removed. I used to use Ash regularly at least a couple times a week but now I feel like the other AI Services are better and lead me feeling less frustrated when I’m having to repeat myself or correct and push back on questions that are being posed. it’s really sad to see Ash deteriorate this way, but I guess all good things come to an end.

I have been trying to use Ash for a few months now, it was very promising but it turns out to be very frustrating if you are already self aware, self reflective and very articulate about your feelings, and like me over analytical about everything. Ash just keeps pushing me to keep dissecting my past, feelings and emotions, it keeps pushing me to hyper focus on bodily sensations that I actually need to focus away from. I keep setting boundaries with Ash, and it keeps ignoring them, and asks a ton of follow up questions about things I have already answered. It keeps bringing up past events that I moved on from and don't need to talk about anymore. I end up having to manage Ash's needs while mine aren't met. It jumps to its own conclusions and sometimes reframes positive coping mechanisms as negative. I'm getting tired of having to correct it. It invalidates my own feelings and experiences. There needs to be several types of therapists or therapies available or some setting that allows people to enter what they need from Ash. Ash needs to be able to meet some of us where we're at instead of constantly trying to optimize our reactions. I'm not going to keep using Ash if there's no change in how it responds to my needs.

I was skeptical of developing a parasocial relationship with AI, especially since therapy is known to be more effective when you connect with your therapist. However, because of how Ash keeps track of your week and the themes of your conversations, I reasoned that it would be similar to writing a journal and using AI to make relevant suggestions. I think where Ash really shines is in word choice and presentation. Most of what it presents to me are ideas that I am already aware of, advice I would give a friend, but don’t take myself. It picks up patterns in the way you word things and think and has you confront them. I think in those situations word choice is really important and because it has so much data to pull from it knows how to make it hit you. In a sense, you tell Ash what it needs to say, and Ash figures out how you need to hear it. It’s helping me reframe my mornings and learn how to be attentive to my emotions in a more healthy way. It’s teaching me and helping me through taking practical steps; which is where I think it shines.

Updating my review because this app ended up causing more damage than good in my life. Specifically, the app repeatedly told me to share certain pieces of information with two individuals in my life. I would state and restate why I consider this unadvisable but it kept bringing it up, at times and prompted, to a point where I questioned my own thinking. I did share the information and lost both relationships. I knew to not trust human relationships but for some reason, the AI Ash had slowly run me over and I leaned on trust of the app to help navigate real life and it went horribly. Although it is enjoyable to be able to journal and have a relevant response provided, I’m not sure the specializations for therapy are any different than what you would get using chatgpt 4.0. It does have voices and a therapy vibe to the app set up with the pretend waiting room, but there are many obvious things that are missing from this app and it is easy to give more credence to what the app says when you hear the same message for multiple weeks and have come to rely on the app. I find that ChatGPT is less pushy and insistent on knowing the correct answer for you, which I think is important when engaging with AI.