(2017-08-03) This Therapy Robot That Lives In Facebook Messenger Wants To Treat Your Anxiety

This Therapy Robot That Lives In Facebook Messenger Wants To Treat Your Anxiety

“I’ll teach you how to crush self-defeating thinking styles,” promises my new therapist as he flashes me a thumbs-up. “I’ll give you insight on how your mood changes

My digital therapist is called Woebot, and he’s a new kind of low-key clinician. The chatbot uses the principles of cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) and lives in my Facebook Messenger account.

The best way to characterize him is that he is your guide in a guided self-help version of cognitive behavioral therapy,” explains Dr. Alison Darcy, a clinical psychologist and the CEO and founder of San Francisco-based Woebot Labs, Inc.

With Woebot, this manifests itself in daily mental exercises. The month-old chatbot is not meant to be a replacement for a real-life therapist “and never will be,” stresses Darcy. Instead, it ushers users through a process of learning about oneself and how one’s thinking can potentially be biased, skewed, and undermining one’s health. “But you ultimately have to do all the work and all the learning yourself,” says Darcy.

$39 per month

personalization doesn’t really kick in until several weeks of interaction.

*It’s still pretty rigid, scripted conversation in lots of places.”

The Woebot team could potentially infuse their creation with more AI, but at the moment, it’s deemed too risky for such a sensitive category. “We’d rather control exactly what Woebot says than risk Woebot saying something that might be viewed as invalidating for somebody,” explains Darcy. The goal is to slowly increase its machine learning, but only following thorough testing.*