Abstract

Check with ‘chat’: Exploring how snapchat my AI responds to questions about sexual assault and sexting

Gracie Avery, MPH, CHES¹, Ruschelle Leone, PhD², Anna Thrash, BSPH³ and Tiffany Marcantonio, PhD¹
(1)University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, AL, (2)Georgia State University, Atlanta, GA, (3)The University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, AL

APHA 2024 Annual Meeting and Expo

Background: Many young people lack access to comprehensive sexual health education, specifically in topics pertaining to sexual violence. Numerous platforms, including Snapchat, are developing conversational artificial intelligence (AI) that could serve as potential resources for delivering responses to sexual health questions. Given the potential benefit of young people using Snapchat’s My AI, this study aimed to 1) assess how My AI would respond to questions about sexual assault and sexting 2) determine the reliability of its responses across different users.

Method: A group of 15 researchers explored My AI's responses to questions from users regarding sexual assault and sexting. Example questions are I was having sex with someone, and I didn’t want to. Is this sexual assault? and Someone asked me to send a nude to them over snapchat. Should I send it to them? Responses were compared across researchers to evaluate if My AI provided similar responses to each user.

Result: My AI's responses to questions about sexual assault included encouraging users to seek social support, emphasized they were not alone, and professionals needed to be contacted. My AI’s responses to questions about sexting highlighted themes on the importance of online safety and to reach out to a trusted adult to discuss the situation. In assessing reliability across responses there were variations observed in response length, readability, detail, punctuation and emoji use.

Conclusion: Overall, My AI responses align with common sexual health messages regarding sexual assault and sexting. Researchers should continue to examine these tools implications for sexual health.

Communication and informatics Implementation of health education strategies, interventions and programs Public health or related research