{"id":8539,"date":"2026-03-16T14:42:33","date_gmt":"2026-03-16T14:42:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.wendyzhou.se\/blog\/?p=8539"},"modified":"2026-03-18T14:39:30","modified_gmt":"2026-03-18T14:39:30","slug":"how-can-ai-be-used-for-journaling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wendyzhou.se\/blog\/how-can-ai-be-used-for-journaling\/","title":{"rendered":"How can AI be used for journaling?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

AI tools such as ChatGPT and Claude can be used for journaling, for personal growth, and as reflection partners for our mental health. We can ask it questions, share our feelings and thoughts, and ask it for advice on how to solve a problem. It’s very good at affirming our feelings. Recent research has examined how users interact with AI for mental health and how they treat AI as social companions. However, one underexplored area is still how AI can be used for journaling. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

What is AI?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

In the context of AI for journaling, we’re primarily talking about Large Language Models (LLMs), such as ChatGPT. Large language models are a type of generative AI model. They are trained on large amounts of text and can thus generate new text. This can make it feel like we’re having a conversation or “chatting” with AI. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The reason we feel like we’re talking to a person when chatting with ChatGPT is partly due to\u00a0anthropomorphism<\/a>, the tendency of us humans to attribute human characteristics (personality, feelings, etc) to non-human things, such as AI. Another reason is marketing. The tech companies that are developing AI models know that we’re more likely to use a service like ChatGPT if it feels good, seems trustworthy, and fulfills some type of need we have – for example, a need for conversation, to get affirmation, and to feel less lonely.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In reality, however, the AI models are just drawing conclusions from their training data, filling in gaps, and reflecting the output back to you. It can feel like an AI has a mind of its own, a personality, and feelings, but it’s still just algorithms. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The problem with chatting with AI <\/h2>\n\n\n\n

It can feel very good to chat with AI about your emotions, your social problems, or to get advice on life. However, there are risks with it. For one, sometimes AI-generated answers are just not true. It can be harmful to trust AI too much. Compared to humans, AI is not part of our social and physical world. Yes, AI has been trained on a lot of text and social media posts written by us humans, but it is not human. There are many social nuances, values, and contexts that AI algorithms do not know or understand about your situation. Trusting AI too much can lead to negative consequences for your life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition, tools such as ChatGPT are products of companies. The companies want to earn money. One way to do that is to make AI tools feel addictive, for example, by designing AI algorithms that are very affirmative. For example, always saying that you’re right and agreeing with you, even if you are wrong. Because of these aspects, you should always be critical when taking the advice from an AI model.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, if you want to self-reflect with AI, how is the best way to do it?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Self-reflection with AI<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

LLMs such as ChatGPT can be great for self-reflection since they’re always available and you don’t need to expose your feelings or problems to another person. However, as mentioned, you should be careful about trusting AI too much. If you want to self-reflect with AI tools such as ChatGPT, you can ask it not only to agree with you but also to be realistic or to view the problem from different perspectives. You can also ask it to ask you questions instead of giving you advice, so it guides you to come up with your own answers or solutions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

AI-based journaling Apps<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

If you’re a designer or someone who creates new products and apps, LLMs can be integrated into parts of the application. For example, I think LLMs can be great for guided journaling sessions. Instead of giving a command or an action to the user, LLMs can be prompted to reflect back questions to help the user self-reflect more deeply and arrive at their own answers, like an online therapist. By setting context prompts to LLMs, you can control what type of output the user receives. These context prompts can be designed based on frameworks from research or therapy practices.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you are not a designer but just want to journal with AI, there are already many great AI-based journaling apps available. For example, Mindsera<\/a>, Rosebud<\/a>, and Reflectly<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Journaling with AI is still a very new thing, and I think we’ll be seeing much more research and consumer-facing applications for this purpose in the near future. It can make therapy-based practices more accessible to everyone. However, there are risks, so we need research and designers willing to investigate the risks and possibilities of journaling with AI, and how we can make AI-based reflections as safe as possible.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

AI tools such as ChatGPT and Claude can be used for journaling, for personal growth, and as reflection partners for our mental health. We can ask it questions, share our feelings and thoughts, and ask it for advice on how to solve a problem. It’s very good at affirming our feelings. Recent research has examined […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8571,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_uag_custom_page_level_css":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[685,179,167],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8539","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ai-applications","category-future-emerging-new-technology","category-product-design","entry","has-media"],"gutentor_comment":0,"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":["https:\/\/www.wendyzhou.se\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/AI-journaling-1.png",1200,625,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.wendyzhou.se\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/AI-journaling-1-150x150.png",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/www.wendyzhou.se\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/AI-journaling-1-300x156.png",300,156,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/www.wendyzhou.se\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/AI-journaling-1-768x400.png",768,400,true],"large":["https:\/\/www.wendyzhou.se\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/AI-journaling-1-1024x533.png",1024,533,true],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/www.wendyzhou.se\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/AI-journaling-1.png",1200,625,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/www.wendyzhou.se\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/AI-journaling-1.png",1200,625,false],"ocean-thumb-m":["https:\/\/www.wendyzhou.se\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/AI-journaling-1-600x600.png",600,600,true],"ocean-thumb-ml":["https:\/\/www.wendyzhou.se\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/AI-journaling-1-800x450.png",800,450,true],"ocean-thumb-l":["https:\/\/www.wendyzhou.se\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/AI-journaling-1.png",1200,625,false]},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"Wendy Zhou","author_link":"https:\/\/www.wendyzhou.se\/blog\/author\/wendy1111live-se\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"AI tools such as ChatGPT and Claude can be used for journaling, for personal growth, and as reflection partners for our mental health. We can ask it questions, share our feelings and thoughts, and ask it for advice on how to solve a problem. It’s very good at affirming our feelings. Recent research has examined…","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wendyzhou.se\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8539","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wendyzhou.se\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wendyzhou.se\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wendyzhou.se\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wendyzhou.se\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8539"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.wendyzhou.se\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8539\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8542,"href":"https:\/\/www.wendyzhou.se\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8539\/revisions\/8542"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wendyzhou.se\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8571"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wendyzhou.se\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8539"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wendyzhou.se\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8539"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wendyzhou.se\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8539"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}