LOS ANGELES — The study, which was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found AI-generated responses to complex human situations made recipients feel more “heard” than messages generated by untrained humans and that AI was better at detecting emotions than human responders.

However, when recipients learned the responses were AI-generated, they reported feeling less heard.

The researchers sought to understand AI's potential and limitations in meeting human psychological need in a world where dwindling empathetic connections in a fast-paced world are making human needs for feeling heard and validated increasingly unmet.