National Eating Disorder Association chatbot axed over harmful advice

A US-based organisation that is designed to support people with an eating disorder has recently had its chatbot suspended after it provided calamitous advice.

Last week the National Eating Disorder Association (NEDA) chatbot shut down its live helpline, otherwise known as ‘Tessa’, and has been directing people to other resources who approach the organisation for help with their eating disorder.

The news has come after individuals have posted screenshots on Instagram about the harmful advice they received. People have claimed the AI bot continued to advise behaviours such as calorie counting and dieting.  

According to Beat, a leading eating disorder charity, an investigation that was conducted by the Health Service Journal found 19 people in England lost their lives to an eating disorder due to failings in care within the last five years. This shows that for patients already struggling with stigma around their weight, further encouragement to shed pounds can lead to disordered eating behaviours such as bingeing, restricting or purging.

In a statement that was originally shared with US media outlets, Liz Thompson, CEO of NEDA, said the advice the chatbot shared is ‘against our policies and core beliefs as an eating disorder organisation’.

Launched in 1999 and created by Ellen Fitzsimmons-Craft, a Professor of Psychiatry at Washington University’s medical school, and her team, the tool was made to offer advice on eating disorders as seeking professional help can be both timely and costly.

Professor Fitzsimmons-Craft told the BBC: ‘It was never intended to be a replacement for the helpline. It was an entirely different service.’

The Professor and her team also stated they gave the programme to NEDA and a technology firm to deploy to clients last year and since then, believes a ‘bug’ has infected the original design to make the algorithm function more like recent AI tools.

‘Our study absolutely never had that feature’, Professor Fitzsimmons-Craft said. ‘It is not the programme that we developed, tested and have shown to be effective.’

The programme planned to close its helpline at the start of this month and dismissed the staff and volunteers who had maintained the information and treatment options available.

Image: Mohamed Nohassi