I would say it is greatly worse.

AI prompts are designed to simulate empathy as a social engineering tactic. "I understand", "I hear you", "I feel what you are say" ... it is quite sickening. Every one that I used has this type of pseudo feedback.

I also find irony that AI must be designed with simulated empathy, to seem intelligent, while at the same time so many people in power and with money are saying empathy is a bad / unintelligent.

Empathy is the only medium of intelligence one can have to walk in the shoes of others. You cannot live your neighbors experiences. You can only listen and learn from them.

More broadly it's the only medium to have successful any form of voluntary relationships based on sympathy. It's absolutely crucial for non-sociopath to have at least some kind of empathy because otherwise no one would simply chose you to include into their lives. I understand why they are doing that. It's simply more pleasurable to use. I chose to turn opt-out of this. For me it's creepy. I want Jarvis, not fake virtual friend.