The American Psychological Association issued a warning about AI digital twins after just one year of mainstream adoption. The urgency signals something unusual: psychological risks are outpacing public awareness, with therapists reporting identity confusion, grief disruption, and decision-making erosion across demographics.
The Psychological Risks Most People Miss
Privacy concerns dominate digital twin discussions, but the APA warning points to something deeper: how these tools interact with core psychological processes. Identity fragmentation emerges when an AI version of you sends emails you didn’t write and maintains relationships you didn’t nurture. That narrative continuity fractures. Clinicians describe patients expressing disorienting feelings that their real self and digital self are diverging.
Grief exploitation cuts even deeper. Bereaved individuals interacting with digital twins of lost loved ones report initial comfort followed by prolonged inability to accept death’s finality. The behavioral pattern mirrors complicated grief, where mourning becomes chronic because the brain never fully processes the loss. A simulation that talks like your mother doesn’t help you grieve. It gives your brain just enough signal to delay acceptance.
The Deeper Issue Nobody Is Naming
Psychological growth depends on friction. Encountering challenging perspectives, sitting with discomfort, making decisions under uncertainty: these cognitive processes build resilience. A digital twin eliminates that friction by design. It reinforces existing patterns, validates current preferences, and handles situations you’d rather avoid.
Synthetic emotions don’t simply replicate human feelings; they actively reshape them. When people regularly interact with an AI calibrated to their emotional baseline, their tolerance for genuine human unpredictability may decrease. The messiness of real relationships starts to feel like a bug rather than a feature.
Neuroscience offers a sobering principle: cognitive processes we don’t regularly exercise become harder to access over time. Outsource your decision-making long enough, and the neural pathways supporting autonomous choice begin to weaken.
