ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Psychology for Clinical Settings
Empathy AI in Healthcare
Provisionally accepted
- University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom
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AI is changing healthcare and potentially even how humans interpret empathy. The motivation for this research is to evaluate whether and, if applicable, to what extent AI can show elements of empathy. While some may consider AI never genuinely empathetic, the goal is to know when AI expressions of empathy are productive versus harmful (Inzlicht et al. 2024). Differences in perspective make defining empathy especially challenging. Empathy in healthcare is becoming a more significant focus, with related metrics like quality of care, patient-centered care, and patient satisfaction as core objectives. The paper explores whether chatbots can help bridge the gap in defining and offering empathy while reimagining care for a digital future. We develop a tool for evaluating empathy (Chatbot Compassion Quotient, or CCQ). We compare Chat-GPT and Claude-generated responses with responses from healthcare professionals. In a corollary to the Turing test, participants also guessed which of the responses was AI-generated. Results indicated that participants considered responses from ChatGPT and Claude more empathetic than the human responses, with length being a potential factor impacting evaluations. Responses that appeared most obviously AI-generated performed well compared to human responses. The study highlights the promise of human-machine synergy in healthcare.
Keywords: Empathy, human-machine interaction, AI in healthcare, AI in medicine, conversational AI, empathic AI, Chatbot evaluation
Received: 06 Aug 2025; Accepted: 24 Nov 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Muthukumar. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Karishma Muthukumar, karishmuthu@gmail.com
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