A therapy chatbot funded by Health New Zealand Te Whatu Ora is being launched today, as clinicians grapple with the ethics of using artificial intelligence advice in mental healthcare.
Wellbeing company Groov, co-founded by All Blacks great Sir John Kirwan, has created a Government-funded artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot that can provide mild to moderate mental health support.
Minister for Mental Health Matt Doocey said the chatbot would provide faster access to support, “allowing us to get in early and prevent problems from escalating”.
It comes after the Government announced in September it would invest up to $70 million in AI research over the next seven years through the New Zealand Institute for Advanced Technology.
The therapy chatbot, named Ask Groov, works by using generative AI to provide answers to questions relating to mental-health or wellbeing concerns. It works largely the same way as popular chatbot ChatGPT, where users can ask any question and receive a human-sounding response, however, it also comes with the additional policy that users’ data will be kept safe and not be used to train AI.
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