AI Tools for Therapy

Dr Kirk Honda interviews Gregg Spiridellis (founder of JibJab, etc.) about his AI tools for therapists and clients.

This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/KIRK to get 10% off your first month.

00:00 Introducing Gregg Spiridellis
04:19 What inspired Moments?
14:33 How private is my data?
25:40 What feedback have they received?
26:33 What is Moments for Therapists?  
43:47 Could this app be useful?
52:25 Why are prompts so important?
58:28 What do you lose with AI? 

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October 27, 2025

The Psychology In Seattle Podcast ®

Trigger Warning: This episode may include topics such as assault, trauma, and discrimination. If necessary, listeners are encouraged to refrain from listening and care for their safety and well-being.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, Deserver listeners, we have a really special guest with
us today, Greg Spiritdellis. He reached out to me wanting
to talk about a app that he has developed that
uses AI that helps clients and therapists, and we talked
prior to this recording, and it was an interesting conversation,

(00:22):
and I want to get into this. I want to
talk about what this app exactly does, but also I
want to talk about some of the concerns that I
and a lot of people have. So let's get into it.
Welcome to the podcast, Greg spirit Ellis, Thank.

Speaker 2 (00:38):
You so much. It's great to be here. Fan of
the show.

Speaker 1 (00:40):
So for people to give context, Greg and his brother,
I believe you told me develop JibJab, which is a
famous online app service thing. People might associate it with
uploading photos, right, and you can have these dance routines,
these little gifts or whatever, flash kind of animation. But

(01:03):
also prior to that becoming famous, you were doing online comedy,
flash videos and whatnot in the early Internet age. Tell
me about that.

Speaker 2 (01:16):
Yeah, Actually, I come from a more traditional background. I
was doing my MBA at and I had been an
investment banker for four years. Was doing my NBA. My
brother was out of arts school and doing film festivals,
and the Internet came around, and I remember while I
was at business school, I saw full motion cartoon with

(01:37):
sound streaming over a phone line and it just it
just blew my mind. And I called my brother and
I was like, stop looking at television, like, look at this.
This is the future, the you know, as he always
reminded me, he said, don't bang out horseshoes. The model
t's coming off the line, Like this is where you
can actually create something and reach an entire, glad, global

(02:00):
audience without anybody in between you and that audience. So
I mean, now this is just a fact of life
TikTok and everything else. But back then it was a
somewhat you know, novel idea. So we started a studio
called jib Jab began doing political satires. Was really the
early kind of the early format. So some folks may
remember in two thousand and four we did a video

(02:21):
called this Land is Your Land, and it was George
Bush and John Kerry doing a parody that was probably
one of the first global viral video hits. I mean,
this thing went everywhere. Peter Jennings named myself and my
brother People of the Year of for ABC News in
two thousand and four. The year before was Larry and

(02:43):
Sergey from Google. So I always say, we've got one
year to catch up, but you know, we're working on it.
But yeah, we evolved. We love technology, We love storytelling.
When Facebook opened up the platform and people could access
their photos, we created something called Starring You that enabled
you to grab you and your friends and cut their

(03:04):
faces out and put them into videos. And you know,
we produced Elf Yourself, which was another big hit. And
so we've just always been excited about how technology enables
new forms of storytelling. And you know, we built your
jeb for twenty plus years and then started another business

(03:24):
called Storybots, which is a kids and family franchise. We
actually started on YouTube, created a show that we got
onto Netflix, and then Netflix bought the company in twenty nineteen,
and we we were producers at Netflix for the show
for four years, a show one eleven Emmys, So we're

(03:46):
really proud of that. And now we're off on our
next adventures, part of which for me is Moments, which
is the app we've talked about and really kind of
ties into that thread of how can technology unlocked storytelling
because I'm not a therapist. I'm the client of a therapist,
and you know, for me, therapy is a form of storytelling.

(04:09):
And I started to dabble and build technologies that help
me tell my stories better to make the most out
of the time I had with my therapist.

Speaker 1 (04:19):
Yeah, so we talked previously about what had inspired you
to create this app that is supposed to help clients.

Speaker 2 (04:28):
Yeah. So in twenty sixteen, I got divorced and a
friend of mine, actually podcaster Tim Ferriss, some folks may know,
he was a real advocate for journaling, and so I
started journaling for every day. And this is still my
practice this morning, every single day. It is a no

(04:49):
matter what I write in my journal when I wake
up in the morning, and so I do it in
a Google doc. And so I developed this practice of
not only journaling every month, and briefly it could be
one hundred and fifty two hundred words whatever's on my mind.
But after a journal I'd go back and I would
read the prior year's journal entries. So for example, today

(05:11):
is October, Say it's October tenth, twenty twenty five. This morning,
after I journal, I go back and I read October tenth,
twenty sixteen, October tenth, twenty seventeen, and I found that
these I started to see the patterns of my life.
I started to see the things where I would have
negative talk. I started to see where I got overly enthusiastic.

(05:35):
I just I could see, with the benefit of hindsight,
all of these patterns. So fast forward or rewind now.
But in twenty twenty two, when chatch EPT came out,
I was seeing a therapist and I started thinking, you know,
I come into my therapy session sometimes I don't really

(05:58):
know what to talk about a lot of times I
have recency bias what happened yesterday? And I'd see my
therapist every two weeks. So one day before I went
into therapy, I said, you know, I'm going to take
my past two weeks of journal entries about twenty pages,
put it into chat EPT, and say, give me a
two hundred word summary of what's been happening in my

(06:19):
life that I can read to my therapists at the
beginning of the session and update him on what's happening.
And I said, okay, what are the three things that
have caused me the most stress over the past two weeks,
and so I walked into the session and I said, hey,
do you mind if I read this, because you know,
I'm experimenting with better, you know, ways we can make

(06:40):
better use of the time and get to the kind
of the core. And I did, and it was it
was like rocket fuel. It was just this great way
because a lot of times I didn't remember what happened
two weeks ago. So it was this great like spark
of discussion. And I found that the fifteen minutes or
so we would spend at the beginning of the session
and getting our feet on the ground and getting the

(07:02):
kind of the momentum going that happened in a few
minutes and then all that extra time was kind of
available at the end of the session where like the
good stuff's happening. And so I got really excited about it.
And I love building technology, and I'm like, this is
literally a storytelling, Like I tell myself a story every day,
and now I'm using this tool to kind of help
me synthesize this story and tell it to my therapist.

(07:25):
And so that sent me on a journey I started
in That was in November of twenty twenty two. In
July of twenty twenty three, I started building what's now
you know, our app and our main app in the
app store now is Moments for Therapists, and that's really
a tool for the therapist on the note taking side.

Speaker 1 (07:47):
Is the app available for clients to summarize things?

Speaker 2 (07:51):
Yeah, the client app is not in the app Store
as of today, but it will be back in the
app Store in a couple of weeks. We took it
out so that we could focus on the core product,
which was creating a note taker for therapists. And we're
a small team, so we said, you know what, we've
really got to focus and get this one nailed down.

(08:13):
And we're there. So we're actually right now at this
very moment, my developer is actually getting the client app
ready and back for the app store.

Speaker 1 (08:22):
And what's the client app called?

Speaker 2 (08:23):
That was just called Moments Journal.

Speaker 1 (08:25):
Okay, so you have Moments Journal that's for clients, and
you have Moments for Therapists, which is for therapist notes.

Speaker 2 (08:32):
Correct.

Speaker 1 (08:33):
Yeah, okay, so let's talk about Moments Journal. What's the
exact function? How does it work?

Speaker 2 (08:39):
The idea is simplicity. So I like to write, but
writing is feels like work to a lot of people.
And so if you opened up the Moment, you know
the Moment's Journal app, what you literally see is a
giant button and the idea is that you can voice journal,
and so you like tab the button and you voice journal,

(09:00):
and then we use AI to create a title, a
one sentence summary, so when you're looking at all your
journal entries, you get a set quick sense of what
it is, and then when you tap into it, we
use AI to kind of clean up the grammar because
when you're speaking casually, you know you don't necessarily it's
not the most readable formats, so we'll clean up the

(09:20):
grammar and then provide bullet pointed lists as well. So
it's just a it's a really simple way to journal.
And what I love about it when I when I
use it, it's it's about capturing how you're feeling. The
reason the name of the company is Moments, it's how
do you feel in the moment? Like so much fidelity
is lost even when I journal in the morning about
what happened the day before. If you can you know,

(09:43):
if you're feeling something, you're coming home from work, you
had a tough day, you can journal literally in your
car and kind of capture those those those those feelings
and those experiences while while while you're they're still with you.

Speaker 1 (09:58):
The idea is that it's both helpful as a journal
just independent of being a client, but it can also
help in therapy. That's what you found personally in your
own work exactly.

Speaker 2 (10:11):
And so there's also a section of the app, so
you have the place where you can capture anything. It's
really easy to open the app, press the button capture.
There's the journal section, my journal section which has all
of your prior journals. And then there's a section called insights,
which you can say, summarize what's been happening, and you
can select the date range and you can get that
report that I was talking about that I used in

(10:32):
my own therapy sessions.

Speaker 1 (10:34):
So the insights, the AI summary or drawing connections can
help people so that they can see themes or insights
or questions. I don't know what sort of questions or
bullet points it pulls out, but I can imagine given
my experience with other AI bots, And your hope is

(10:58):
that for people they can use this to help them
journal in a more efficient way instead of going to
Google docs. And because I've been journaling since I was thirteen,
so I very much know about that feeling of reading
old entries and saying, oh my god, I'm still as
stupid as I was when I was fifteen? What's wrong

(11:19):
with me? And it helps to know that you're that
stupid and you.

Speaker 2 (11:23):
Know, yeah by the patterns, like at least you know
at least you know at least when it happens again,
you go, yeah, that's me being stupid.

Speaker 1 (11:31):
But when you journal, especially at length over forty years,
then it's hard to quickly draw connections or to ask
questions of it, whereas AI is pretty good at that
or is potentially a tool that could be used and

(11:53):
that can be just independently helpful just as a journaler,
but it could also be something you up at the
beginning of session or you know, five minutes before session,
so that as a client you can tell the therapists
what you've been up to recently, what's been on your mind,
how you've been feeling. Because for yourself and myself as

(12:18):
a client, but also as a therapist working with a
lot of clients, I can say that there is a
percentage of clients that will sit down on the couch
you know, if you have a few kids, you work
all day, you had chores, there was a commute, and
you sit down on the couch and you're just like, okay,
now it's time for me, you know, because some people
it's like they were fighting traffic and they're worrying about things,

(12:40):
they're on the phone when they're you know, they finally
sit down on the couch and then that's the first
moment since the minute they left the last session last
week that they are actually thinking about themselves and they think, okay,
where am I? And that's fine. But some people will
find that the first ten, twenty thirty, maybe forty five

(13:01):
minutes of the session are reorienting yourself with yourself such
that you know, you could kind of see it as
wasting time that you could have saved, especially since you're
on the clock. You're paying a lot of money for this.
If you had just kept a quick, convenient running tally
or journal so that you can just pull that up

(13:21):
and say, oh well, and you don't even have to
read your journal because the AI has pulled different you know,
bullet points, and you could even ask the AI what
should I tell my therapist? Because that would be kind
of a different set of bullet points than just summarizing
like you went to a movie last week, Like that's
not really relevant. So you know, I could see that
absolutely being helpful. I will say that as an asterisk

(13:44):
that there is something to say for that kind of
free associative work. You know, like if we pull from
the journal, then it kind of orients us towards a
certain set of of topics that might eclipse what might
come up for a spontaneously in the moment in session.

(14:08):
Having said that, you know, any tool available is going
to be a tool that we can evaluate case by
case basis for clients. And I would imagine that in
general that this would be helpful. But there's the issue
of privacy, hallucinations, confidentiality, capitalism, exploitation, hacks. So let's get

(14:32):
into that. Let's first talk about privacy, right, because your
idea is is that, look, your journal is your deepest,
darkest You don't even tell your therapist or your spouse
or anyone this kind of stuff. I mean not all
the time, but you know that's generally the way it's seen. Right,
you are uploading that to this company that has zeros

(14:56):
and ones that represent all those thoughts and we all
know that there are companies that will be suspected or
have been found to sell that information use that information. Now,
some companies will literally say, you know, like open AI
chat GBT, They'll say, do not tell us your deepest

(15:17):
start secrets, because that is it's not private. We we
have told you that everything you type in the chat
GBT we can use for something, you know what I mean,
So don't don't tell us that. Now you're asking please,
you know, go for it. So how do you protect privacy?

Speaker 2 (15:37):
Okay, so first of all I have to I have
to like say, the origin of this company is I
could not find a private journaling app in the app store.
Every app that I tried to download, you have to
register using a name, an email address, a phone number, uh,

(15:59):
something that could be used to identify you as a
human being on that server. So the way our client
app works is the only way to log into the
client app is with an Apple log in. And so
when a user logs in with an Apple login, we
do not. All we get is a long identifier from Apple,

(16:23):
long data strength from Apple saying you know this user
is you know six seven Q FOURST and that is
all we have on our server to identify the end user.
So we don't have name, we don't have email, we
don't have phone. We actually block tracking of IP addresses,
geolocation device ideas. The idea is that there is no

(16:48):
account system that could ever be tied to you as
an individual. Now clearly like Apple knows who you are,
but they don't have that data, and we don't know
who you are, and we have that data. And my
mission why I built this company is I wanted to
create an anonymous, private space for people to capture their

(17:10):
feelings and experiences and then to be able to have
access to these amazing AI tools in this private, kind
of sandboxed environment. So that is the literally the origin
of the company is around ensuring that the end user's
identity does not sit on a server alongside all of
these deeply private experiences. On top of that, when you record,

(17:38):
you capture your voice for your entry, that is encrypted
on your phone, it's encrypted while it's being sent over
the internet, and it's encrypted in our database. So there's
no like, no one can look at our database and
see people's entries. You actually have to go through what's
called an encryption key, which is a whole other service
and to decrypt it and to be able to look

(18:00):
at it. So I am comfortable saying we are the
like architected as the most private note taking journaling experience
in the entire app store. And I think it also
comes from like what my goal is, Like I don't
want your email address to market to you. I don't want,

(18:21):
like like our business models literally to provide this like
very private space for end users. And our business model
is around is on the subscription side. So so that
that's how we deal with privacy is like it's architected
so that I couldn't if you said to me, if

(18:41):
you said, hey, you know, I use your product, I
could never look in my database. And first of all,
I don't have any encryption keys. That's like through a
developer like protocol that I'm that I don't have access to.
But even if we could decrypt things, you know, there's
no account with your name on it, I couldn't find it.
And that's by desire.

Speaker 1 (19:03):
Yeah, but what if you change your mind in the future.
That happens sometimes, and also what if you sell the
company and that person decides to pull back some of
that architecture to exploit the data for some other purpose
that happens sometimes in my world, I'm often talking with

(19:23):
couples about trust, and in a sense, you could kind
of think about the consumer us in a relationship with
tech people, and that relationship over the last twenty years
has been a problem. We have been exploited repeatedly by
companies that claim privacy or at the very least aren't

(19:46):
explicit and aren't clear and upfront about how they are
using your private information not only to market products like
on Timu to you, but literally to manipulate the algorithm
to drive you down a path of fear and paranoia
so that you can use Facebook more often, this sort

(20:08):
of thing. And you're a part of that. You know
you didn't do those things, but you're a part of
that tech world and that app developer world, and us
as consumers have been burned so many fucking times that
I wouldn't trust you with that at all. We've chatted.
You seem like a nice enough guy, But I'll tell you,

(20:30):
even with all that you just told me, if I
was to press that button on that app and I was,
you know, maybe I'd use it, but I wouldn't give
it my deepest darkest you know, So what do you
say to that?

Speaker 2 (20:43):
Yeah, I mean it does come down to trust. You know.
All I can do is share the story of you know,
what we've built, why we've built it, and what our
mission is and why we're doing it. And you and
I have talked offline. Like I've had other successful businesses,

(21:06):
I've got another successful business right now. This is my
passion business because I believe deeply that there is a
need for a tool that enables people to access these
really powerful models for the things we talked about, synthesizing
what's been happening in your life, playing it back to you,

(21:27):
helping you identify patterns, Like there needs to be a
private space where you can use those tools. And it's
never going to be perfect. Like, yeah, are we like
all the things you mentioned are are we perfect? No?
But are we building the very best solution that can
be built to provide a private place for people to

(21:50):
access these tools the moost private and that's our mission.
And like, I have zero interest in turning of maximizing
profit at the expense of this business because this is
this is I'm not doing this for that reason. I'm
not looking to raise in the next round of venture capital.
I'm not looking to go public. I'm looking to put

(22:12):
something into the world that's that's good, that like that's
helped me, that I think is going to help a
lot of other people. And I think that this is
uh you know, this is that That's why I do it.
That's what gets me excited about it. It's not oh, no,
I want to go might get a private jet. No,
this is not the business to go get a private jet.
There are lots of other businesses to go get private jets.

(22:33):
This is not one of them. This is one where
you go, you know, at the end of the day,
when my when my productive and creative years are done,
if I can look back and go, oh my god,
like ten thousand or one hundred thousand or a million
people like are able to use something I built to
better understand the patterns in their lives and live better

(22:56):
lives like that is that's a legacy. That's I love that.
That's what motivates me around this business.

Speaker 1 (23:04):
Okay, yeah, I but that still can be exploited or
hacked or used or misused or something. You know, there's
still a connection there. Now. Having said that, you know,
most people are doing this with apps that aren't even
saying that this is private. So there's a lot of

(23:26):
users out there that don't care. I'm actually kind of
one of them, because you know, I've thought about, like
what if this got out there. I'm like, I don't know,
maybe I'd be a little embarrassed, but it wouldn't destroy
my life. I'm not really doing anything that would be
that scandalous. So I imagine for a lot of people
it's not that big of a deal. But anyway, I want.

Speaker 2 (23:46):
To say, like that's also another thing, like most people,
like most people are not that sensitive to this, and
that's wrong. They should be. They should be. Sam Allman,
you mentioned open Aiyes, Sam Altman is out there saying
people are using open ai like chat GPTs A therapists
do not do that, Like this data is not encrypted,

(24:07):
Like if the police came to us, we would turn
over everything, like and these are your most intimate moments.
You know. I'm not going after the chat ept audience,
and I'm not going after the ninety five percent of
the people who don't care about these things. What I'm
saying is, this is not about building the biggest business.

(24:28):
This is about building Like the thing that I want
in the world, that my co founder wants in the world,
like that thing where you're like, okay, like yes, this
could all you know, Look, someone the police could go
to Apple, get an identification and come to us with
a warrant. Guess what if it's you know, if there's
criminal activity like that is you know, there is that possibility.

(24:51):
I will say Apple is about as is the best
defender of privacy in the entire tech ecosystem, and they
have to go to Apple first, get through them, and
they have to come to us, and they'd have to
get through us. And you better believe, like I would
fight tooth and nail to the to the like to
the end of the line, because that's the mission of

(25:12):
the company is to create this private space. But at
the end of the day, if someone's using this, you know,
using services illegally and people get Warrens. Yeah, there are
there are paths to de identify. But like you said,
this is for the people who care about privacy and
anonymity you know more than most. But there are those

(25:32):
other vectors where identity could by law be exposed.

Speaker 1 (25:40):
What sort of feedback have you heard about your app
Moments Moments Journal what's the people It's Moments Journal.

Speaker 2 (25:49):
But the app that's in the app store now that
we've been focusing on is the therapist products. So Moments
for therapists, and the people who use it love it
like we have. You know, you know a few hundred
subscribers who don't only use this like a couple of
times a week, they use it for like all of

(26:09):
their sessions and all of their dictations. We get great.
The best feedback of all is the renewals of the
people who are subscribing to our product, and that's you know,
ninety five percent plus every month or coming back and
saying this product is delivering you know, delivering the value
to me and they're using it like you know, ten ten,

(26:31):
ten to twenty notes a week on average per user.

Speaker 1 (26:34):
Well, we have to start from scratch and say what
the app does exactly?

Speaker 2 (26:38):
Oh okay, great, Sorry. So one of the when I
was showing my therapist is what I was doing for myself.
You know, it's like, could I is that something that
could you know help help me? Because I literally sit
in sessions all day long and if I could capture
them and synthesize these, it would help me keep track

(26:58):
of all my clients and everything, and that set us
down the path of building Moments for Therapists, and so
Moments for Therapists is again a very simple app. You
can create a client list, and we encourage in the
app to not identify clients. You can you know, you
could name me gs one, you can name me Apple,

(27:21):
you can name me anything. So it's the key thing
about the Moments for Therapists app is it's not tied
to an EHR. So we see a lot of like
EHRs are starting to integrate these tools of like record
all of your sessions. And for me as a client,
I'm like, wait a minute, Like you have literally my name, address,
phone number, insurance, Like you have my entire most identity

(27:43):
in your database, and now you're saying you want to
record like my innermost thoughts and put it in a database
next to my no, right, right right.

Speaker 1 (27:52):
Let me let me talk about that for a second,
because that's important to highlight that for many decades as therapists,
especially once we had the standard of practice regarding record keeping,
we had different levels of record keeping and different levels

(28:13):
of detail. So I'll just give myself as an example
that there are a lot of different concerns that I
have as a therapist. When I am keeping records of
clients and individual sessions, there's a minimum level of information
that has to be kept track of, like name, address,
this kind of stuff, and then each session and treatment

(28:36):
plan assessment, there's a minimum amount. Now I wouldn't necessarily
do the minimum, because I'm not just trying to do
the minimum, but there's a minimum level of information that
needs to be in the record for purposes of the
standard of care, continuation of services, if I was capacitated,
or if I died, or if the client wanted to

(28:56):
pull their file and look at it or there, or
for myself just looking back at progress and being able
to better treat individual clients knowing what has happened in
the past. But the balance to that is that we
don't want to put every detail in the file because
clients don't want every detail to be on record that

(29:20):
could be pulled by you know, authorities, or is passed
around or something. And the concern for clients is that, Okay, yeah,
I was talking about my sexual fantasies and in the record.
It would help you as a therapist to have that

(29:40):
in there. Of like we talked about the client sexual fantasies.
But I don't want you to talk about the granular
detail of that sexual fantasy. I didn't think you're going
to put that in there. You know, if I go
through a divorce or something and this gets pulled or
or there's some kind of legal issue that I need
to have this hold, that isn't what I want in there.

(30:04):
Insurance companies often have potential access to some part of
the file anyway, So then we have, according to Hippa Law,
this other form of keeping notes and tracking what's happening
in session. We call these psychotherapy notes. And these are

(30:24):
notes that are not in the official file. They're kept
in a different official file, but they're not a part
of the official client file. And in the Hippa Law
it designates how to do this, and we will, as therapists,
take our own notes on a client, because if we
don't keep track of individual details, then we might forget

(30:47):
or we might not be able to draw connections this
kind of thing. And so we have those other notes.
But they're often written in a very personalized form. You know,
if someone's saw my scribbled notes on my notepad, they
wouldn't really know what it was saying, I mean, there'd
be a couple of sentences in there that would be comprehensible,

(31:08):
but there's a lot of little symbols and little abbreviations
that only I know of, and so there's that. But crucially,
if the file was pulled by the client, even they
don't have access to those notes, now there's some legal
gray zone there that I will go into. But generally speaking,
that's the way that it is. So when we have

(31:32):
these online services that are very helpful, that are encrypted
and are private, right for us therapists, that's the general
practice that we have these encrypted services that will keep
tracking of our notes to help us with billing DDDDD.
And you know, in recent years it's become the norm

(31:56):
for therapists to use this. I'm old school. I still
have a file with a lock on it because I
don't know. I just I don't have that many clients,
so it's not hard for me to do. I'm just
used to it. But they've been starting to offer these
other functions that are saying, hey, you know, you could
just record the sessions, And in the past that wouldn't

(32:19):
have been very useful because you know, if you record
thirty sessions a week, like it's just taking up hard
drive space. You're not going to do anything with it.
But with AI, it can summarize it. You can do
a search for like a keyword, and as a therapist,
this could be very helpful. But that's all in the
client record. It's literally like documenting every single word that's

(32:43):
happening that the client is telling you and putting it
in the client file. And as I've been saying, the
standard of practice or the typical way that we think
about this sort of thing is that clients don't want
every single word in the official file. So what you're
saying is that there's this other What you're offering is

(33:06):
this app that isn't a part of that health record system.
It's separate. It's a kin in my in the hippo
language to the psychotherapy notes. That's not a part of
the official file. But it's a tool that therapists can
use to keep track and to have a way of

(33:27):
having more granular detail. You know, like when a client
tells me about their trauma narrative, that does not go
in their client file because it gets very granular and
they don't want they don't want that in the client file.
But I need to keep track of that because with
trauma narratives and treatment and exposure therapy imaginal exposure, I

(33:48):
need to keep track of that so that we can
go over that story over and over agains. You know,
it's a typical exposure therapy style. And so there's a
separate file with you know, a separate app that separate
from these online therapy record app you know services. Then
you know, this could solve that that. I don't know

(34:10):
if I would personally use it, but if I was
coming into being a therapist today and there was this
service that I wouldn't have to be scribbling around, I
wouldn't have to divert my attention from my clients to
jot things down, then you know I could see that.
I could see that being helpful. But so be specific

(34:32):
about moments. For therapists, this is something that they do
after the session. Is that what you're saying, where they
they talked through the app?

Speaker 2 (34:41):
Yeah, you can't. It's it's up to the therapists. Most
of the therapists using the product are doing live session capture.
So so for example, you could create you create your
client list. I could be GS one when I show up,
you tap into that client button, start capturing, put it aside. Obviously,

(35:04):
with client consent, everything is you know client, you know
that that all applies, and then at the end of
the session we hit done and will generate a soap
note or adapt note the various format. You know, we
have all the the main formats, but this is not
sitting in the electronic health record next, you know, attached

(35:24):
to all the clients private data.

Speaker 1 (35:26):
And so right, so to be specific, you would copy
and paste that.

Speaker 2 (35:31):
Like we have a website that you can log into,
and it makes it very easy to either edit your
notes and right there and then copy just what but
basically copy whatever you want into the next browser, tab
into Simple Practice or whatever your EHUR is. So it's
just a way to kind of separate, like you're saying,

(35:53):
all of that raw data, which to your point, I
mean all of that transcript data, Like the what you
could extract from that with AI is it's you know,
it's deeply personal. To be sitting there in the database
with all of your personal information is pretty scary, is
you know, pretty scary?

Speaker 1 (36:12):
Yeah. Yeah. And the way that the law works is
that whatever is in the official file is in the
official file. You can't section things off. Now, maybe these
online therapy record services will have a way of sectioning
off the granular session data as psychotherapy notes, but you know,

(36:35):
it would be easier to trust if there was a
completely different company that only had that, because one of
the things that can happen is that you can have
your record pulled. And so you give the client record,
and if they don't ask for the psychotherapy notes, you
don't even have to mention it, right they say, give
me the client file, and so here you go, and

(36:56):
you know, you don't have to say and by the way,
you had this other file because and even if you
did that, if they asked for it, generally speaking with
you know, legal advice, you can say, I'm not going
to release that anyway.

Speaker 2 (37:07):
We just we destroy the audio files as they're transcribed.
So the ways work is every thirty seconds, a chunk
of the audio from the session is sent to the
server encrypted, it's transcribed, and the audio file is deleted.
Because like audio is a biomarker, audio voice is a biomarker.

(37:27):
So that's just one of the things I was when
you talk about recordings and people know that that's like
a part of it for us is like I don't
want my voice sitting on a hard drive somewhere, even
if it is encrypted. We don't unstore any of that.

Speaker 1 (37:39):
Okay, it's also more data. It takes up more makes
up our space. But okay, so you have the transcriptions
and if I were to use this app, then I
would have a folder that had you know, if you
were the client, you know gs meaning that it doesn't

(37:59):
have your name associated with it. Then the idea is
is that if someone were to hack in, what's the
worry that you would have?

Speaker 2 (38:11):
Yeah, oh on our side or.

Speaker 1 (38:14):
Well, you're marketing it and trying to have it so that.

Speaker 2 (38:18):
It is not.

Speaker 1 (38:22):
Well. But it's also even if someone saw it, they
wouldn't know who they were exactly referring to, right, So
the worry wouldn't be internal, right because your practice and
the architecture as such that I'm guessing similar to the
other Moments app that we talked earlier, that your employees
or other.

Speaker 2 (38:43):
People systems know everything's encrypted, Like I couldn't look in
a database and see any data like by design, like
we have a system that actually and keeps a log
of keys that decrypt the data. So like if I
look at our admin control, I don't see any I
can't see client. I can't even see g as one.

(39:04):
In our systems, like every little bit of data is
is encrypted, so you know, and that's the idea. And
it's also the idea to not say, like when you
go to add a client on our screen, it's one
formed field. It's not like first name, last name, birth date,
like it's one field, and we say create anonymous a client.
You know, we encourage you to you know, not use

(39:27):
names and to use some sort of other way of
you know, identifying who this client is. So we like
try to you know, push that through the whole experience.
So even though it is encrypted, if you could somehow
decrypt it, it would you know, I could be called Pumpkin.
It's like it doesn't you know.

Speaker 1 (39:46):
But if you had a number of sets, even just
one session, there could be enough information if someone got
their hands on it, that they could identify the person,
right if they talked about their job, or they talked
about a certain person's name, or they said something about

(40:07):
what they were doing in life. It wouldn't be hard,
especially for AI that was sort of scrolling through it.
You know, they can figure out. I mean, Google can
figure out who I am, even if I'm using a
computer that isn't mine. I could just tell based on
certain even if I'm not logging into anything, you can
just be like, oh, it's that guy because of preferences

(40:30):
or even just the way I'm moving my mouse or
how fast I'm scrolling through an app like, it has
ways of identifying the individual, and so it wouldn't be
hard to look at it, you know, if people did
get their hands on it. But you know, I suppose
that's true if someone was to hack into a health
record online system as well.

Speaker 2 (40:51):
Right thing is, if you could get through the decryption
and all the other security safeguards in a system where
your identity he also existed, it would be easy. But uh,
you know, our system is designed so that everything, you know,
you'd have to decrypt everything one at a time and

(41:15):
try to tie together all of these things and infer
who the person behind these multiple sessions is. So again
it's like, you know, it's, uh, I think there are
no absolutes in security, but I think we have the
best architected solution to kind of take advantage of these tools.
And then it becomes you know, a risk and you know,

(41:35):
risk and benefits type of decision for the individuals. And
I will say also, I have a lot like one
of my oldest you know, clients on the app. He's
become a friend and I know him, so he's my
he's like become a personal friend. He's actually in Boulder
where I am, and he uses the tool to synthesize
the sessions, he gets his notes, he puts what he

(41:58):
wants into his EHR, and he deletes the note, so,
you know, so he's he's on the end of the
spectrum of I know you, Greg, I trust you. I
don't trust systems, so I'm going to delete every record.
So it can be used as kind of a processing
tool as well. But I really think the real long

(42:19):
term value is to be able to look at sessions
longitudinally and and and and extract insights that help that
help that help you do your a better job as
a therapist, identifying patterns and helping clients. But there is that,
you know, people fall on that risk opportunity spectrum different places.

Speaker 1 (42:39):
Yeah, So the initial worry about all of these kinds
of things using online record keeping was initially people therapists
were very hesitant to use it. But then when experts

(43:00):
started to talk about this, they said, well, you know,
someone can break into your office and take all your files,
so it's not like your files were ever super secure,
and the or your daughter can wander into your office
probably and get a hold of your keys and take

(43:21):
your stuff, so it's not like your records were super
secure before. And you know that doesn't mean that all
bets are off, but there's a possibility that if you
have good password control for yourself as a therapist with
these online services, that it's way more secure than if
you had a file cabinet in your office. So there's,

(43:42):
like you said, risk versus benefit. I'll just say, for
myself as a therapist and as a supervisor, if I
can know that the information is private and that the
therapist has control over like deletion and having the doing
it in their own comfort level. Because basically what you're
saying is your friend is like, look, I trust you, Greg,

(44:04):
and yet I'm still not going to just leave this
data up on these servers. I'm deleting it even though
I trust you. So but if we can trust these services,
which you know, given certain reassurances, I could see a
lot of therapists doing I mean clearly all the therapists
are doing it already, not only with yours but with

(44:25):
other online online services. But yeah, absolutely there's risks and
there has to be training, and there has to be
understanding of therapists on how to use this because there
are hallucinations there and large language models tend to summarize

(44:46):
in a particular way. It's not purely objective, if that
makes sense, and so there are cautions. But yeah, it
could be extremely useful for therapists to be able to
you know, I don't have this problem anymore because I
have very few clients, but when I had a full load,

(45:08):
especially when I was working at agency, because they really
push you to the limit when you're working at an
agency to have, like, you know, a thirty five sessions
in a week, and ten of them are brand new
clients that you've only been working with one to five weeks.
And I would have clients come into my office because
you know, I'm frazzled. I only had two minutes to

(45:29):
go to the bathroom. And I sit down and the
receptionist sends in the new client, and I'm looking at
the client and I'm like I know I've talked to
you before, but I don't remember anything. I don't even
remember your name, you know what I mean. And so
to have a tool that I can say while I'm
in the bathroom and I pull up and appen, I'm

(45:52):
just like, okay, next client, give me three bullet points
of what they talked about in the last session or
in the previous and it can summarize that for me.
I mean, that's just what has saved my ass. But
it would enhance treatment for sure.

Speaker 2 (46:08):
Yeah, that's a feature Actually in our app we have
it's called recaps, and so if you go into the client,
they're basically flash cards and so we'll take your hour
long session and will extract you know up I think
it's ten up to ten of the key the key

(46:29):
moments in the session, and we put them into flip cards.
So you can basically TikTok your way to kind of recalibrate.
Because the people using our tools are the people in
those situations. They're not the folks who have five clients
and it's like they've got you know, it's these are people.
These are folks who are working with a lot of
people and trying to like the documentation backs up. So, like,

(46:54):
the big thing for us is people come to us,
why do they come to us documentation like the aclog
and the bringing it home and the weekends and it's that.
So we call that the painkiller, Like we can we
can do your first draft of your notes like and
then you can do what you want with them. But
the vitamin. The thing that we think, like people go,
oh wow, this makes me, this makes me better, is

(47:16):
in those three minutes when you're going to the bathroom
and you're flipping through the cards, you're like, oh, yeah,
his sister did this and he had this event coming up.
And then the clientsh sound and we say, oh, how
did the you know, how is the kids music recital
with your ex there? And so all of a sudden
the client's like he remembers me, Like hell.

Speaker 1 (47:37):
And that that for sure, but also, oh, yeah we
talked last time, or maybe maybe even I could see
the app helping to identify things that you might have
been neglecting. I don't know if you do this, but
say the model is such that it will matter flag

(47:57):
or you can ask it. What's something that got into
that was kind of juicy that we haven't talked about again,
you know, because every session is recorded, and it could say, well,
there was this one thing seven sessions ago where you
talked about how her dad had this way of parenting her,
and there's a possibility of it having You know, when

(48:20):
I think about this, it's like if it was trained
on theory, even which I'm guessing it's not. But in
the future, it could be that it could be able
to identify certain theoretical angles like that kind of sounds
like projective identification, and it could tell me that, and
then I would be like, oh yeah. And then because

(48:40):
there's so many times when I will in session be
you know, the way that my practice is that if
there's something like that that happens, like ooh wow, that
sounds that's something that just happened, or I just noticed
something that we should definitely be revisited as we move forward.

(49:02):
And I also know that if I don't jot this down,
I might forget it. So I will jot it down
in my notes. I have a legal pad that is
there for me with every client. You know, there's a
certain scribbled page, but you know, I might not recognize
sometimes I jot things down. I don't even know what
I meant by it, You know.

Speaker 2 (49:21):
I love that feature honestly, Like because I said live sessions,
but a lot of our subscribers will use a product
for dictation post session, so they don't want to get
consent and they don't feel comfortable capturing the session, but
they can do like a voice dictation, a two minute
voice dictation. But I could see a feature where you
could say follow up, where there'd be a follow up

(49:41):
sectionion you could just say, hey, remember to follow up
on this, and then in those three minutes before the
person walks in the next week, you can actually flip
through those as well.

Speaker 1 (49:51):
Right, Yeah, I could see that being extremely helpful. And
if there are clients out there that have had this
experience and so you know what it's like when you
can kind of tell that your therapist forgot what you said.

Speaker 2 (50:05):
P yeah, and if there's thirty people a week, you know,
let's have some empathy for the therapists like this.

Speaker 1 (50:11):
Really but it feels, it feels shitty, and it calls
into question the whole thing. It's like, oh, well, what
else have you forgotten? And are you keeping track of anything?
Do you care? You know what I mean? So this
could really help that a lot.

Speaker 2 (50:28):
Yeah, this is what excites me about the tool. It's
not the Hey we can do your soap notes faster.
That's great. I mean, there are the folks who see
a lot of clients. It's this is the number one
cause of burnout is like documentation, so that we can
help with that is great. But it excites me are
things like, hey, can we get that therapist prepared in

(50:50):
thirty seconds with a couple of card flips. When that
client walks in the room, they feel seen in a
way that the therapist wasn't able to do in the
past because it was impossible to kind of access those
quick bites and show up that way. But also, ultimately,
you know, the bigger vision is how do we take
what happened in the session and extend and give the

(51:12):
therapist a tool to push exercises, journaling, prompts, things that
are related to the session out to the client so
that they can continue the work in between sessions. Like
that's a big vision. That's where I'd really love to
see our product go. Is that closed loop to say like, okay,
like you walked in, I remembered these things because this

(51:34):
tool helped me remember them. We had a great session,
and after the session, I was able to, like with
a couple of taps, send you a couple of relevant
exercises that you get to do during the week and
bring back to the next session. So I love it.
That's what excites me when I think about the product
building and the opportunity. It's really like closing the loop
between sessions for both the therapists and the client.

Speaker 1 (51:57):
Yeah, I could see it being really powerful. The journaling,
if the client wanted to, could be summarized quickly so
that a therapist can either review that in the minute
before the client arrives or in the first five minutes
of the session and pull it up and they you know,

(52:17):
client and therapists can look at Okay, here are the
themes that the AI and maybe even it pulls quotes right,
like here's where they were talking about that. But what
was the LM trained on exactly?

Speaker 2 (52:33):
So we use open AI, So we use their APIs
with what's called a zero endpoint, so that there's no
there is there's no training, no storage, no anything. It's
just a quick it's a it's a transaction. But the
real the real art in this is in the prompt writing,
so working with therapists and how and how it processes

(52:57):
the transcript is where the real art comes in. And
so basically the prompts are very specific about what it's
you know, what information it's looking for and how it's
going to categorize it and summarize it. And the way
our prompts are written are are are they're very specifically designed.

(53:22):
Two basically two to ground it even more than the models,
because you mentioned hallucinations and and that that's a problem,
and it's it's become much much less of a problem
as the models get better. But the way we do
it is we literally break up the words that we're
spoken into subjective objective, you know, assessments, and we and

(53:43):
and and then we do simple grammatic uh, grammatical changes.
So it's there's an art to prompt writing. And I
think like ours, you know, they work really well. People
really love that, but they don't you know, we don't
you know, kno would We haven't had any inbound customer
supports about hallucinations.

Speaker 1 (54:04):
I could see a lot of uses. I could see
it helping with diagnosis. There's been research regarding using it
in the medical field. I don't know of any in
the psychotherapeutic field. But I imagine that there is research going
on that could help. Now, do we want a robot diagnosing. No,

(54:24):
But it's a tool that therapists can use to help,
you know, and just the overall, especially with certain diagnoses
that are more complicated, like personality sorders. You know, I
don't know how good open AI would be with that,
but if again, you have therapists that are trained to
know the certain prompts, know how to use it in

(54:46):
a way that is responsible and ethical, I could see
it helping. Because with diagnosing more complicated diagnoses, it's too
much to ask therapists to be experts on the entire DSM.
I am an expert on a majority of it, but
I am a professor, I'm a podcaster, I'm dedicated, I'm old.

(55:07):
I've been a therapist for thirty years. So it's uh,
you know, I have that, But you know, most therapists,
you know, they go to work, they go to graduate school,
they go to work, and they have kids, and they
have chores and they have lives and they don't have
time to you know, constantly learn and go deeper. And
so AI this tool that you wouldn't use to diagnose,

(55:31):
but you would use it to help a little bit,
to give you information and that it could potentially catch
details that you that slipped your mind or that you
forgot right. It could maybe because it has that entire
if it is recording all the sessions. I say all
this again with the caution of capitalistic exploitation, hacking, all

(55:55):
sorts of things. If we you know, so everything depends
on that security, which is something that you know, you're
you're definitely trying to establish and I guess have established,
but we just can't really know moving into the future.
But if we can really be assured of that and

(56:16):
count on that, then I could see this this helping. Again,
there's hallucinations. It'll I find chat gbt I you know,
I've I've used the fifth iteration and on some things
it's pretty good. But with other things that just makes
shit up, especially when it comes to research, and and

(56:37):
it'll look real, real good. You know, it'll even have
like a link. It'll say here's the study. This has
happened to me yesterday, and I'm just like, it just
makes it so I don't trust anything. It's but if
I use it as a tool that I don't take
as true what I'm like, Okay, well some of that
might be true, and then I just do my own

(56:58):
leg work. But so it's kind of like a weird
Google in a sense. So now what you're asking Open
Eye to do is not that sort of thing. It's
just pulling from the transcripts, which my experience is less
likely to create hostinations because it's pulling directly from a
small set of data, right, it's not.

Speaker 2 (57:19):
It's sympthesizing what's there as opposed to creating material based
on a prompt. And even then it's like how you
ask it. So we've got like very specific steps. First
do this, I can do that, and then you know,
you go through these steps. At the very end, we
have a process that goes, okay, here's your note. Now

(57:40):
go back to this thing and look for inconsistencies. If
there are any, make a change, do it again. So yeah,
the prompt writing piece is the art you know, to
to this. And and like I said, you know, we
feel we've we've had really good people love our output,

(58:00):
like the thing you can tell you can go and
there are there are dozens of services that will do
kind of the note taking piece. You know, I think
where we excel as kind of on the user experience
side from a consumer app background, So it doesn't feel
like medical software when you're using our stuff. But I
think the real value is what comes out and the

(58:22):
quality of the notes and how grounded they are. And
you know, I think people tell us that, you know,
we stack up at the top there.

Speaker 1 (58:28):
Okay, yeah, I suppose The last little concern that I
would have for this app or any other app that
does this sort of thing, is that when you transcribe
conversations of any sort, particularly therapeutic conversations, you lose ninety
percent of what's being communicated. You lose the emotional content,

(58:51):
you lose the emphasis, you lose the facial expression, the
body language, and you can't really know from a transcript
what really happened in session. But you know, that's why
human therapists are still needed.

Speaker 2 (59:08):
And I you said before, like we are this is
a tool for the therapists. This is not a like
here's the output, put it in the record, move on.
Like our job is to make the therapist's job easier.
And they're like our checkpoints at each like along the way,
and it's the therapist's job to look at it and

(59:29):
to add those details. I always say, like, the most
powerful moments in my therapy sessions are the ones where,
like my therapist says nothing and it makes me sit
in silence for you know, an excruciating long period of
time to sit with whatever stupid thing I just said, Like,
you know, and those things don't get captured in transcript

(59:52):
and you know, and I think that to us is key.
It's like, look, and also we haven't even talked about
like therapy bots and these sorts of things, but like, like,
there is no part of our vision that is ever
anything that removes humans from the like, from the providing
of these sorts of services, because you know, there's there's

(01:00:15):
too much in the nuance and there are too many
you know, too many potentially bad things that can happen
in our happening with these therapy bots. You have states
that are like banning these you know, client facing therapy
bots entirely. So we're you know, again, how do we
how do we help solve pain points for therapists and
how do we give them tools like the recap cards

(01:00:37):
that help them do their jobs better? But like you
know that that's an important part of kind of our
product philosophy is we're helping with therapists. We're not like
looking to kind of take all of the work away
from them. They've got to touch this stuff at some point.

Speaker 1 (01:00:52):
Yeah, the last thing I'll say, it just occurred to
me that there's a similars a parallel experience I have
in my person life where there are certain details that
my friends will tell me in conversation that for whatever reason,
I forget pretty easily, and they're pretty big details, you know,
like their mom died or something. I know that sounds

(01:01:15):
really horrible, but unless I was kind of there when
they were going through the grief, or if it was
something we talked about for a while, which might not
have been the case, then sometimes I'll forget these really
important details. And so, I mean, usually it's not something

(01:01:38):
like that. Usually it's something like I have a friend who,
this is just hypothetical, has pretty intense joint pain recently
or something, and they're not super talkative about it, but
I care, and when I see them next, I would
like to remember that so I can just ask them

(01:01:58):
about it or just know that they're silently suffering in
that way. And it just occurred to me that for
myself if of course they consented to recording the conversations. Plus,
it would be kind of this interesting little journal of
both of your lives and your friendship. You know, you
could ask the AI how close are were or have

(01:02:23):
we ever talked? Because you know the other part of
this that now all these like uses are coming to
mind about you know, I guess moments for friends or something,
And I am frequently driving home thinking, Kirk, you probably
just said the same story to that person that you

(01:02:44):
say every time you see them, because there's certain topics
that come up, and then I'll think, wait, did I
did I tell that person that story ten other times?
And I loathe the possibility that someone says, well, here
he goes, he's telling me that stupid ass story again,

(01:03:04):
and now it's a little different, So is he lying
or something? And so if I had a ai'd be like, dude,
am I moments for friends? Am I? Am I saying
the same stories to the same person? Actually, yeah, you've
been You've said the story three times and it's been
a little different. And then the next time I'm gonna

(01:03:25):
hang out with that friend, I'll be Okay, what stories
have I already blathed into their ears that I should
avoid and it will tell me and that'll say. You know, also,
three times ago they mentioned they had joint pain. You
haven't asked him about. Oh yeah, thanks. You know, Like,
I know that sounds really dumb because it's just like, oh,
an app to help me be a better friend. But
but I I personally would find that to be useful.

Speaker 2 (01:03:47):
It's not. Yeah, no, it's not dumb. I mean there
are some companies out there now that are going to
the extremes. You're creating these pins that literally capture your
entire day and they're just like live streaming your your conversations,
and I mean, yeah, these these tools are getting integrated
like in really like the world is changing very quickly,

(01:04:10):
and people's and honestly people's comfort with these tools, you know,
is is progressing or devolving. I don't know, depending on
your perspective, but like, you know, look, I make an
app that's a note taker, and nothing makes me more
aggravated than when I get onto a zoom and someone

(01:04:30):
thinks it's just okay to have a note taker already
there recording what I'm saying without my permission. Like so
I think there's this there's this there's social norms and
etiquettes that are starting to form, and you know, so
I'm not going to be the guy wearing the pin
to record everything because you know, like I started this
company because I like my private space for that for that.

(01:04:51):
But but I did, and I get annoyed when note
takers show up on zooms and no one says, hey,
is it okay if I take not like if I
bring my note taker like that makes me. That makes
me crazy. So but on the other hand, to your point,
like I use my app all the time to like
capture things like you know, I'll have you know, like

(01:05:12):
I have a friend going through a rough divorce and
I'll do a little if I talked to him, I'll say, hey,
you know, Joe's going through this and here's what's going on,
and you know, and I'll set a reminder to check
in with them in a week and you know what
I mean. It's just so I use it for little
things that are that can be helpful to me, that
make it really easy to capture and like move on.

Speaker 1 (01:05:32):
All right, Well, Greg, thanks for coming on the podcast,
And I want to remind all the listeners out there
to please take care of yourself, Greg. Why should people
take care of themselves?

Speaker 2 (01:05:44):
Oh, I mean because you only have oneself. I mean honestly,
you have to. You know, it's uh. If you don't
do it, nobody else will