Alongside has huge plans to interrupt damaging cycles earlier than they flip medical, mentioned Dr. Elsa Friis, a licensed psychologist for the corporate, whose background contains figuring out autism, ADHD and suicide danger utilizing Giant Language Fashions (LLMs).
The Alongside app at the moment companions with greater than 200 colleges throughout 19 states, and collects pupil chat knowledge for his or her annual youth psychological well being report — not a peer reviewed publication. Their findings this yr, mentioned Friis, had been shocking. With virtually no point out of social media or cyberbullying, the coed customers reported that their most urgent points needed to do with feeling overwhelmed, poor sleep habits and relationship issues.
Alongside boasts optimistic and insightful knowledge factors of their report and pilot research carried out earlier in 2025, however specialists like Ryan McBain, a well being researcher on the RAND Company, mentioned that the info isn’t sturdy sufficient to grasp the actual implications of a majority of these AI psychological well being instruments.
“In case you’re going to market a product to thousands and thousands of kids in adolescence all through the US by faculty programs, they should meet some minimal commonplace within the context of precise rigorous trials,” mentioned McBain.
However beneath all the report’s knowledge, what does it actually imply for college students to have 24/7 entry to a chatbot that’s designed to deal with their psychological well being, social, and behavioral considerations?
What’s the distinction between AI chatbots and AI companions?
AI companions fall beneath the bigger umbrella of AI chatbots. And whereas chatbots have gotten increasingly more refined, AI companions are distinct within the ways in which they work together with customers. AI companions are inclined to have much less built-in guardrails, that means they’re coded to endlessly adapt to consumer enter; AI chatbots alternatively might need extra guardrails in place to maintain a dialog on observe or on matter. For instance, a troubleshooting chatbot for a meals supply firm has particular directions to hold on conversations that solely pertain to meals supply and app points and isn’t designed to stray from the subject as a result of it doesn’t know tips on how to.
However the line between AI chatbot and AI companion turns into blurred as increasingly more individuals are utilizing chatbots like ChatGPT as an emotional or therapeutic sounding board. The people-pleasing options of AI companions can and have turn out to be a rising subject of concern, particularly in the case of teenagers and different susceptible individuals who use these companions to, at instances, validate their suicidality, delusions and unhealthy dependency on these AI companions.
A current report from Frequent Sense Media expanded on the dangerous results that AI companion use has on adolescents and teenagers. In accordance with the report, AI platforms like Character.AI are “designed to simulate humanlike interplay” within the type of “digital mates, confidants, and even therapists.”
Though Frequent Sense Media discovered that AI companions “pose ‘unacceptable dangers’ for customers beneath 18,” younger individuals are nonetheless utilizing these platforms at excessive charges.
Seventy two % of the 1,060 teenagers surveyed by Frequent Sense mentioned that that they had used an AI companion earlier than, and 52% of teenagers surveyed are “common customers” of AI companions. Nonetheless, for essentially the most half, the report discovered that almost all of teenagers worth human friendships greater than AI companions, don’t share private info with AI companions and maintain some degree of skepticism towards AI companions. Thirty 9 % of teenagers surveyed additionally mentioned that they apply abilities they practiced with AI companions, like expressing feelings, apologizing and standing up for themselves, in actual life.
When evaluating Frequent Sense Media’s suggestions for safer AI use to Alongside’s chatbot options, they do meet a few of these suggestions — like disaster intervention, utilization limits and skill-building components. In accordance with Mehta, there’s a huge distinction between an AI companion and Alongside’s chatbot. Alongside’s chatbot has built-in security options that require a human to overview sure conversations based mostly on set off phrases or regarding phrases. And in contrast to instruments like AI companions, Mehta continued, Alongside discourages pupil customers from chatting an excessive amount of.
One of many greatest challenges that chatbot builders like Alongside face is mitigating people-pleasing tendencies, mentioned Friis, a defining attribute of AI companions. Guardrails have been put into place by Alongside’s staff to keep away from people-pleasing, which might flip sinister. “We aren’t going to adapt to foul language, we aren’t going to adapt to unhealthy habits,” mentioned Friis. But it surely’s as much as Alongside’s staff to anticipate and decide which language falls into dangerous classes together with when college students attempt to use the chatbot for dishonest.
In accordance with Friis, Alongside errs on the aspect of warning in the case of figuring out what sort of language constitutes a regarding assertion. If a chat is flagged, lecturers on the accomplice faculty are pinged on their telephones. Within the meantime the coed is prompted by Kiwi to finish a disaster evaluation and directed to emergency service numbers if wanted.
Addressing staffing shortages and useful resource gaps
In class settings the place the ratio of scholars to high school counselors is usually impossibly excessive, Alongside acts as a triaging software or liaison between college students and their trusted adults, mentioned Friis. For instance, a dialog between Kiwi and a pupil may include back-and-forth troubleshooting about creating more healthy sleeping habits. The coed could be prompted to speak to their mother and father about making their room darker or including in a nightlight for a greater sleep surroundings. The coed may then come again to their chat after a dialog with their mother and father and inform Kiwi whether or not or not that answer labored. If it did, then the dialog concludes, but when it didn’t then Kiwi can counsel different potential options.
In accordance with Dr. Friis, a few 5-minute back-and-forth conversations with Kiwi, would translate to days if not weeks of conversations with a faculty counselor who has to prioritize college students with essentially the most extreme points and desires like repeated suspensions, suicidality and dropping out.
Utilizing digital applied sciences to triage well being points is just not a brand new thought, mentioned RAND researcher McBain, and pointed to physician wait rooms that greet sufferers with a well being screener on an iPad.
“If a chatbot is a barely extra dynamic consumer interface for gathering that type of info, then I feel, in principle, that’s not a problem,” McBain continued. The unanswered query is whether or not or not chatbots like Kiwi carry out higher, as properly, or worse than a human would, however the one strategy to evaluate the human to the chatbot can be by randomized management trials, mentioned McBain.
“One among my greatest fears is that firms are dashing in to attempt to be the primary of their type,” mentioned McBain, and within the course of are decreasing security and high quality requirements beneath which these firms and their tutorial companions flow into optimistic and crowd pleasing outcomes from their product, he continued.
However there’s mounting stress on faculty counselors to fulfill pupil wants with restricted sources. “It’s actually arduous to create the area that [school counselors] need to create. Counselors need to have these interactions. It’s the system that’s making it actually arduous to have them,” mentioned Friis.
Alongside presents their faculty companions skilled improvement and session companies, in addition to quarterly abstract reviews. A variety of the time these companies revolve round packaging knowledge for grant proposals or for presenting compelling info to superintendents, mentioned Friis.
A research-backed method
On their web site, Alongside touts research-backed strategies used to develop their chatbot, and the corporate has partnered with Dr. Jessica Schleider at Northwestern College, who research and develops single-session psychological well being interventions (SSI) — psychological well being interventions designed to deal with and supply decision to psychological well being considerations with out the expectation of any follow-up periods. A typical counseling intervention is at minimal, 12 weeks lengthy, so single-session interventions had been interesting to the Alongside staff, however “what we all know is that no product has ever been capable of actually successfully try this,” mentioned Friis.
Nonetheless, Schleider’s Lab for Scalable Psychological Well being has revealed a number of peer-reviewed trials and medical analysis demonstrating optimistic outcomes for implementation of SSIs. The Lab for Scalable Psychological Well being additionally presents open supply supplies for folks and professionals curious about implementing SSIs for teenagers and younger individuals, and their initiative Challenge YES presents free and nameless on-line SSIs for youth experiencing psychological well being considerations.
“One among my greatest fears is that firms are dashing in to attempt to be the primary of their type,” mentioned McBain, and within the course of are decreasing security and high quality requirements beneath which these firms and their tutorial companions flow into optimistic and crowd pleasing outcomes from their product, he continued.
What occurs to a child’s knowledge when utilizing AI for psychological well being interventions?
Alongside gathers pupil knowledge from their conversations with the chatbot like temper, hours of sleep, train habits, social habits, on-line interactions, amongst different issues. Whereas this knowledge can provide colleges perception into their college students’ lives, it does deliver up questions on pupil surveillance and knowledge privateness.
Alongside like many different generative AI instruments makes use of different LLM’s APIs — or software programming interface — that means they embody one other firm’s LLM code, like that used for OpenAI’s ChatGPT, of their chatbot programming which processes chat enter and produces chat output. In addition they have their very own in-house LLMs which the Alongside’s AI staff has developed over a few years.
Rising considerations about how consumer knowledge and private info is saved is very pertinent in the case of delicate pupil knowledge. The Alongside staff have opted-in to OpenAI’s zero knowledge retention coverage, which implies that not one of the pupil knowledge is saved by OpenAI or different LLMs that Alongside makes use of, and not one of the knowledge from chats is used for coaching functions.
As a result of Alongside operates in colleges throughout the U.S., they’re FERPA and COPPA compliant, however the knowledge must be saved someplace. So, pupil’s private figuring out info (PII) is uncoupled from their chat knowledge as that info is saved by Amazon Internet Companies (AWS), a cloud-based trade commonplace for personal knowledge storage by tech firms around the globe.
Alongside makes use of an encryption course of that disaggregates the coed PII from their chats. Solely when a dialog will get flagged, and must be seen by people for security causes, does the coed PII join again to the chat in query. As well as, Alongside is required by regulation to retailer pupil chats and knowledge when it has alerted a disaster, and oldsters and guardians are free to request that info, mentioned Friis.
Sometimes, parental consent and pupil knowledge insurance policies are finished by the college companions, and as with every faculty companies supplied like counseling, there’s a parental opt-out choice which should adhere to state and district pointers on parental consent, mentioned Friis.
Alongside and their faculty companions put guardrails in place to ensure that pupil knowledge is saved secure and nameless. Nonetheless, knowledge breaches can nonetheless occur.
How the Alongside LLMs are skilled
One among Alongside’s in-house LLMs is used to determine potential crises in pupil chats and alert the required adults to that disaster, mentioned Mehta. This LLM is skilled on pupil and artificial outputs and key phrases that the Alongside staff enters manually. And since language modifications usually and isn’t all the time straight ahead or simply recognizable, the staff retains an ongoing log of various phrases and phrases, like the favored abbreviation “KMS” (shorthand for “kill myself”) that they retrain this explicit LLM to grasp as disaster pushed.
Though based on Mehta, the method of manually inputting knowledge to coach the disaster assessing LLM is among the greatest efforts that he and his staff has to deal with, he doesn’t see a future by which this course of could possibly be automated by one other AI software. “I wouldn’t be snug automating one thing that might set off a disaster [response],” he mentioned — the desire being that the medical staff led by Friis contribute to this course of by a medical lens.
However with the potential for speedy development in Alongside’s variety of faculty companions, these processes will likely be very troublesome to maintain up with manually, mentioned Robbie Torney, senior director of AI applications at Frequent Sense Media. Though Alongside emphasised their strategy of together with human enter in each their disaster response and LLM improvement, “you possibly can’t essentially scale a system like [this] simply since you’re going to run into the necessity for increasingly more human overview,” continued Torney.
Alongside’s 2024-25 report tracks conflicts in college students’ lives, however doesn’t distinguish whether or not these conflicts are taking place on-line or in particular person. However based on Friis, it doesn’t actually matter the place peer-to-peer battle was happening. Finally, it’s most necessary to be person-centered, mentioned Dr. Friis, and stay centered on what actually issues to every particular person pupil. Alongside does provide proactive ability constructing classes on social media security and digital stewardship.
In terms of sleep, Kiwi is programmed to ask college students about their cellphone habits “as a result of we all know that having your cellphone at night time is among the principal issues that’s gonna maintain you up,” mentioned Dr. Friis.
Common psychological well being screeners out there
Alongside additionally presents an in-app common psychological well being screener to high school companions. One district in Corsicana, Texas — an outdated oil city located exterior of Dallas — discovered the info from the common psychological well being screener invaluable. In accordance with Margie Boulware, govt director of particular applications for Corsicana Unbiased College District, the neighborhood has had points with gun violence, however the district didn’t have a means of surveying their 6,000 college students on the psychological well being results of traumatic occasions like these till Alongside was launched.
In accordance with Boulware, 24% of scholars surveyed in Corsicana, had a trusted grownup of their life, six share factors fewer than the typical in Alongside’s 2024-25 report. “It’s a bit surprising how few children are saying ‘we really really feel related to an grownup,’” mentioned Friis. In accordance with analysis, having a trusted grownup helps with younger individuals’s social and emotional well being and wellbeing, and can even counter the consequences of opposed childhood experiences.
In a county the place the college district is the largest employer and the place 80% of scholars are economically deprived, psychological well being sources are naked. Boulware drew a correlation between the uptick in gun violence and the excessive share of scholars who mentioned that they didn’t have a trusted grownup of their dwelling. And though the info given to the district from Alongside didn’t straight correlate with the violence that the neighborhood had been experiencing, it was the primary time that the district was capable of take a extra complete have a look at pupil psychological well being.
So the district fashioned a activity pressure to deal with these problems with elevated gun violence, and decreased psychological well being and belonging. And for the primary time, moderately than having to guess what number of college students had been battling behavioral points, Boulware and the duty pressure had consultant knowledge to construct off of. And with out the common screening survey that Alongside delivered, the district would have caught to their finish of yr suggestions survey — asking questions like “How was your yr?” and “Did you want your instructor?”
Boulware believed that the common screening survey inspired college students to self-reflect and reply questions extra in truth when put next with earlier suggestions surveys the district had carried out.
In accordance with Boulware, pupil sources and psychological well being sources specifically are scarce in Corsicana. However the district does have a staff of counselors together with 16 tutorial counselors and 6 social emotional counselors.
With not sufficient social emotional counselors to go round, Boulware mentioned that a variety of tier one college students, or college students that don’t require common one-on-one or group tutorial or behavioral interventions, fly beneath their radar. She noticed Alongside as an simply accessible software for college students that provides discrete teaching on psychological well being, social and behavioral points. And it additionally presents educators and directors like herself a glimpse behind the scenes into pupil psychological well being.
Boulware praised Alongside’s proactive options like gamified ability constructing for college students who wrestle with time administration or activity group and may earn factors and badges for finishing sure abilities classes.
And Alongside fills an necessary hole for employees in Corsicana ISD. “The quantity of hours that our kiddos are on Alongside…are hours that they’re not ready exterior of a pupil assist counselor workplace,” which, due to the low ratio of counselors to college students, permits for the social emotional counselors to concentrate on college students experiencing a disaster, mentioned Boulware. There may be “no means I might have allotted the sources,” that Alongside brings to Corsicana, Boulware added.
The Alongside app requires 24/7 human monitoring by their faculty companions. Which means designated educators and admin in every district and college are assigned to obtain alerts all hours of the day, any day of the week together with throughout holidays. This function was a priority for Boulware at first. “If a kiddo’s struggling at three o’clock within the morning and I’m asleep, what does that seem like?” she mentioned. Boulware and her staff needed to hope that an grownup sees a disaster alert in a short time, she continued.
This 24/7 human monitoring system was examined in Corsicana final Christmas break. An alert got here in and it took Boulware ten minutes to see it on her cellphone. By that point, the coed had already begun engaged on an evaluation survey prompted by Alongside, the principal who had seen the alert earlier than Boulware had known as her, and she or he had acquired a textual content message from the coed assist council. Boulware was capable of contact their native chief of police and tackle the disaster unfolding. The coed was capable of join with a counselor that very same afternoon.
