Eric Hegmann is a couples therapist and helps to initiate conversations that couples should be having but have not yet been able to have. He has been working as a couples therapist, singles coach and author for almost 20 years. He has published over a dozen books on love, relationships and finding a partner, has a successful TV series with an associated podcast and is co-founder of the Modern Love School. His counseling services include talks, workshops and courses and, more recently, the conversation AI Eric AI. To mark the release of a new version of this AI, we at ARIC want to know how human and technical communication work together.
ARIC: What motivated you personally to develop conversational AI for couples therapy? Were there certain experiences from your practice where you thought: “An AI could be helpful here”?
I was always interested in how I could support my existing clients online in addition to the therapy process and also new clients. That’s why I started very early on to develop and offer online courses or my love knowledge database, in which I offer interventions, workshops, recordings of seminars and regular so-called drop-in calls, in which relationship topics are discussed in the group, moderated by two therapists I have trained.
The idea for the AI came when I thought about making the more than 2,000 interviews conducted over the past ten years available in a searchable database. So I trained my AI with around 15,000 questions and my answers to each – and was amazed at how good and helpful the results were. However, this was, I don’t want to call it a “Dr. Sommer” bot – not in a derogatory way at all. A therapeutic process or my methodology could not yet be mapped and this revealed the big problem with normal chatbots: they can listen emphatically and give tips from a database, but that has little to do with couples therapy. It is process-oriented and not solution-oriented.
I help couples to have the conversations they should have but haven’t been able to have so far. Eric AI 1.0 to 2.0, however, provided “tips” and were mainly used to complain about the partner. In practice, this is also the normal introduction to couples therapy, but it is not possible to develop goals for the other person, only your own. And this is exactly where therapy helps. However, this is not possible for a chatbot because it cannot implement a therapeutic concept. That’s why the developers at Hyperinteractive and I have offered an agent-based architecture starting with Eric AI 3.0, in which the individual instances can offer, prepare, implement and anchor initial interventions. Now Eric AI can step in and say: “We can’t change your partner here, but we can look at what you might want to change. Would you like to embark on an experiment?”
According to a recent study by HBR, life coaching is one of the most frequently used functions of AI chatbots such as ChatGTP, Claude or Google Gemini. How does Eric AI work and how does it stand out from such general offers?
I am convinced that chatbots will take over many requests to coaches and therapists in the medium term. As a result, numerous providers are now developing solutions that offer couple tips and interventions. We are developing Eric AI so that he can work the way I would. I’m not interested in offering any interventions, but in being able to model my sessions. And these are fundamentally different in their complexity and approach from “Now have a 15-minute dialog every 14 days”.
I stand for a way of working that focuses on self-responsibility and self-efficacy instead of partner blaming and partner repair workshops. That’s just not what couples initially hope for, because they want the “other person to be fixed”. Because of my popularity, couples who want to work with me know that I don’t accept this assignment. So Eric AI can’t accept it either. So what’s the difference to AI chatbots? They fulfill a very human and understandable need, but they don’t solve the cause of the conflict in the medium and long term, because they don’t address it at all. In addition to a very complex technology, this also requires a trusting, parasocial connection between my client and Eric AI, which allows “him” to work in a different way than just reacting with agreement and empathy.
How have your clients reacted so far when you have introduced them to AI? Do couples tend to meet it with curiosity, skepticism or perhaps even relief that they have an additional conversation partner?
The response so far has been very good. An initial study was published in winter 2025 and further studies are planned. Some couples tell Eric AI things they wouldn’t tell me, so it will be interesting to find out why. In any case, it is an advantage that Eric AI is available around the clock and does not require any significant waiting time.
However, clients have to book an appointment with Eric AI, it’s not an always available “Siri” or “Alexa” that can quickly solve a complex problem between the kitchen and the bus stop with a tip. I don’t consider this to be sustainable support and the opposite of my therapeutic goal for clients, which is to promote their self-efficacy and self-responsibility in a process focused on development and differentiation.
In which phases or situations of couples counseling do you see the greatest benefit of AI? For example: Does it help more with reflection between sessions or can it also open up new perspectives in an acute conflict?
AI can fulfill both requirements. There are basically three situations in which couples seek support: to make a decision in which the partners are stuck, to improve the relationship and to prevent a separation or to carry it out. The occasions are also three: one person in the relationship is not doing something the way the other would do it themselves; the way the other wants them to do it; or not the way the other expects them to do it. My aim is for Eric AI to be able to offer therapeutic development support for all couples and all occasions.
“where I think the human therapist is much better is in direct contact to recognize longings, needs and emotions”
Where do you clearly draw the line – in other words, which topics or issues do you feel absolutely belong in the personal guidance of a human therapist and not in the hands of an AI?
I would like to answer here only for couples therapy, because psychotherapy for individuals with ICD 11 disorders has completely different challenges, just when I think of diagnostics. Where I think the human therapist is much better is in direct contact to recognize longings, needs and emotions that are not addressed and hidden for reasons of protective strategies.
You have just released a new version Eric 4.1. What experiences have you had with it and what technical innovations does this version have?
In addition to significant technical enhancements, the video avatar is certainly the most striking new feature. Now clients can talk to Eric AI and he responds. He can also carry out an intervention that is very important to me to improve communication between couples.
Through the name Eric AI and the video avatar, which is modeled on your person, the AI is closely linked to your personality. Is this reflected in a certain counseling style that you transfer from your other therapeutic experiences and methods to the AI, or are you developing new forms of communication here?
Eric AI is not a collection of the world’s best interventions like GPT, the aim is to work with a couple or a partner as I would. In concrete terms, this means share work, emotion-, development- and differentiation-focused methods and a strictly impartial attitude that puts self-responsibility and self-efficacy first and counteracts partner blaming.
“There will always be clients who can’t imagine coaching with an AI.”
In the previous interview, you mentioned that your aim was not to set up the next big AI platform, but to expand your therapeutic services without losing your personal touch. Do you think that this strategy could be a way for other self-employed people in advisory roles to actively use AI for their own business and thus remain competitive in the age of AI?
I wouldn’t dare to judge that. It works for me because I enjoy a great deal of trust. What I see on the market and what I am often offered myself are white label developments on which you can put your own name along with a database with personal messages. My assumption is that this can even be sufficient and supportive for many users. It’s not enough for me from a therapeutic perspective. Do I see a future without AI for my colleagues? There will always be clients who can’t imagine coaching with AI. And that’s a good thing.
Interview: Werner Bogula
With our interviews, we want to introduce you to different perspectives and players in the field of AI. The positions of our interview partners do not necessarily reflect the positions of the ARIC.
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