We plan to develop an artificial intelligence (A.I.) chatbot that will use empathetic dialogue, plus coaching tools and language, to help people achieve their goals. It will be designed to both complement specific therapies (e.g. weight-loss, fitness, CBT) between human sessions and to provide a standalone life-coaching function, based on the best of positive and humanistic psychology.

Robots may challenge us by prompting us to become more reflective about ourselves. Turkle (2005) describes the computer as an evocative object that makes us question how we think and what makes up our nature. (Elizabeth Broadbent, 2017)

Evidence shows that people rapidly project human characteristics onto chatbots and robots, allowing them to become engaging and encouraging. They allow us to feel seen, while also maintaining their scalable, on-demand characteristics. Research has shown that people often choose to receive technology-based support instead of, or in addition to, human-to-human support, for reasons of ease of access, avoidance of judgement and privacy.

We also have designed a prototype, mobile based game that actually combines self-help activities based on mindfulness, positive psychology and CBT with highly, psychologically rewarding gameplay.