Tumblr is currently serving me an ad for "Voda, the LGBTQ mental health app" offering "daily meditations, self-care and AI advice" and as a therapist I am begging you not to download an app where an AI tries to help you with your mental health. Please do not. They tried to have an AI chatbot counsel eating disorder patients and it told them to diet. That shit is not safe. Do not talk to an AI about your mental health please. You don't need to talk to a professional but talk to a PERSON. Edited to add: OK, it's been a long day and I wrote this when I only had the information that was in the ad. It looks like they may not actually have a chatbot, but something that just... churns out pre-programmed advice? That's genuinely a lot safer! But calling it "AI advice" feels a little misleading. This app may be perfectly fine and safe to use, but should probably stick to the fundamentals that people want from a mental health app and not try to use AI hype to market, since the intersection of AI and mental health support is VERY DICEY and bad shit has happened there before. And you should probably do further research on how they are using your data, since that is also an area where mental health support apps have gone bad before.
