Can AI Chatbots Help Fill the Empathy Gap? - ELE Times

ComArtSci Associate Professor of Communication Jingbo Meng wanted to see just how effective artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots could be in delivering supportive messages. So she set up the research and used a chatbot development platform to test it out. "Chatbots have been widely applied in customer service through text- or voice-based communication," she said. "It's a natural extension to think about how AI chatbots can play a role in providing empathy after listening to someone's stories and concerns." In early 2019, Meng began assessing the effectiveness of empathic chatbots by comparing them with human chat.