Using ChatGPT for Therapy Notes? Here’s the Risk No One Explains
If you’re a therapist today, there’s a good chance you’ve experimented with using ChatGPT or another general-purpose AI tool to help write clinical notes.
You finish a session, jot down rough impressions, paste them into an AI prompt, and ask for a clean progress note. It’s fast. It’s convenient. And for many clinicians, it feels like relief.
Most people aren’t doing this because they’re careless. They’re doing it because documentation is overwhelming.
The Problem Isn’t AI. It’s Unbounded AI.
When clinicians use general-purpose AI tools for therapy notes, several critical questions often go unanswered:
- How long is clinical data retained?
- Is any content logged, cached, or reviewed?
- Is data used to train models?
- What audit trail exists?
- Who is considered the author of the final note?
These platforms are built for broad consumer use, not clinical accountability. Even when privacy language exists, it is often opaque and difficult to evaluate.
The Tension Clinicians Are Actually Feeling
Most therapists are not anti-AI. They are asking more careful questions:
- Can I use AI without recording sessions?
- Can I get help without giving up control?
- Can I document efficiently without entering an ethical gray zone?
These are professional concerns, not resistance to change.
You Don’t Have to Record Sessions to Use SnapNotes
One common misconception is that AI documentation tools require session recordings. SnapNotes does not.
SnapNotes can be used by typing or pasting your own session notes, including handwritten notes transcribed by you. AI assists with structure and clarity, not authorship.
No audio recording is required. Your clinical voice remains intact.
A Secure Clinical Workspace, Not a Black Box
SnapNotes was designed as a bounded clinical environment with clear data handling rules. That includes encryption, redaction, and zero-retention processing before AI assistance is applied.
We publish detailed information about how clinical data is handled, secured, and retained on our Security & Privacy page.
Built and Refined by a Practicing Clinician
I’m a licensed clinical social worker, and I’ve been using and refining SnapNotes in real clinical workflows since early 2024.
That means living with documentation pressure, noticing what breaks, and prioritizing predictability and control over novelty.
The Bottom Line
AI will be part of clinical documentation going forward. The real question is whether it will be used carefully, transparently, and on clinicians’ terms.
SnapNotes exists to give clinicians a safer way to use AI without surrendering authorship, judgment, or trust.