LLM-simulated clients can replicate many authentic counselling dynamics, but counsellors' communication patterns differ between human and AI interactions—suggesting LLMs are useful training tools but not perfect substitutes for human role-play.
Researchers compared how counselling students interact with human role-players versus LLM-simulated clients in training sessions. They analyzed conversation patterns at the sentence level to see if LLMs can authentically simulate clients and whether counsellors change their behavior based on who they're talking to.