Summary: Eating Disorder Helpline Disables Chatbot for ‘Harmful’ Responses After Firing Human Staff
“It came to our attention last night that the current version of the Tessa Chatbot, running the Body Positive program, may have given information that was harmful and unrelated to the program,” NEDA said in an Instagram post.
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As of Tuesday, Tessa was taken down by the organization following a viral social media post displaying how the chatbot encouraged unhealthy eating habits rather than helping someone with an eating disorder.
The National Eating Disorder Association (NEDA) has taken its chatbot called Tessa offline, two days before it was set to replace human associates who ran the organization’s hotline.
We’ve taken the program down temporarily until we can understand and fix the ‘bug’ and ‘triggers’ for that commentary.”
Even though Tessa was built with guardrails, according to its creator Dr. Ellen Fitzsimmons-Craft of Washington University’s medical school, the promotion of disordered eating reveals the risks of automating human roles.
A day later, NEDA posted its notice explaining that Tessa was taken offline due to giving harmful responses.
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Eating Disorder Helpline Disables Chatbot for ‘Harmful’ Responses After Firing Human Staff
“Every single thing Tessa suggested were things that led to the development of my eating disorder.”
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