The Chatbot Therapist Will See You Now

Created by a team of Stanford psychologists and AI experts, Woebot uses brief daily chat conversations, mood tracking, curated videos, and word games to help people manage mental health. Scientists who recently looked at text-chat as a supplement to videoconferencing therapy sessions observed that the texting option actually reduced interpersonal anxiety, allowing patients to more fully disclose and discuss issues shrouded in shame, guilt, and embarrassment. Yesterday, Darcy and a team of co-authors at Stanford published a peer-reviewed study in the Journal of Medical Internet Research, Mental Health that randomized 70 college students and asked them to engage with Woebot or a self-help e-book for two weeks. But using those results to claim it can significantly reduce depression may expose Woebot to legal liabilities that bots in supporting roles have managed to avoid.