Mental Health Company Headspace Launches Empathetic AI Companion

Conversational AI tool ‘Ebb’ supports people through the ebbs and flows of life by helping them process their thoughts and emotions and find relevant meditation, mindfulness, and mental health content from the Headspace app

Mental Health Company Headspace Launches Empathetic AI Companion

Sara Lindsey
Director, Corporate Communications
Headspace
+1 919 802 8475
press@headspace.com

Today 7a672fdf2c" shape="rect">Headspace, the world’s leading comprehensive mental health platform, introduced Ebb, an empathetic AI companion integrated into its app to help people navigate life's ups and downs. Ebb provides instant, personalized support designed to guide Headspace members through self-reflection and emotional processing.

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Ebb, an empathetic AI companion, provides instant, personalized support designed to guide Headspace members through self-reflection and emotional processing. (Graphic: Business Wire)

Built by a team of clinical psychologists and data scientists, Ebb is a conversational AI tool trained in motivational interviewing, an evidence-based methodology that can help people make positive behavioral changes. With the guidance of Ebb, Headspace members can engage in deeper self-reflection, process thoughts and emotions, and receive personalized content recommendations from the vast Headspace library of thousands of meditations, mindfulness exercises, and mental health content. By serving up personalized content for the member’s current emotional state, Ebb allows members to seamlessly transition from reflection into a supportive, relevant exercise.

“It can feel daunting to process emotions with friends and family for fear of being judged or misunderstood. We designed Ebb to be an empathetic, non-judgmental listening ear for people through a variety of life circumstances,” said Jenna Glover, Ph.D., Chief Clinical Officer at Headspace. “Long term, we envision Ebb becoming a nimble, knowledgeable mental health companion that learns from member behavior, adapts to changing needs, and complements the care provided by our clinicians and mental health coaches – as well as helps to triage and escort a member to these providers.”

Over the past decade, Headspace has used AI in its platform to reduce the administrative load on its care providers, identify safety risk in member chat conversations, and serve up relevant mental health and mindfulness content to its members. Its new app feature, Ebb, was trained using a combination of large language models, as well as proprietary in-house datasets, which include curated interactions that reflect a broad range of emotions and life experiences.

Designed with safety and privacy in mind, Ebb does not give mental health advice, guidance, or diagnoses, but rather prompts people to pause from their day to reflect on their thoughts and feelings. Research has found various benefits for processing emotions and self-reflection, including improvements on well-being, working memory, stress, and resilience.

“Headspace has long leveraged technology to scale access to a wide variety of mental health and wellness tools and services. Generative AI and machine learning now offers us the ability to turbo-charge these efforts, delivering a level of empathetic sub-clinical engagement not previously available,” said Leslie Witt, Chief Product and Design Officer at Headspace. “While our use of AI is not meant to replace the support licensed mental health professionals provide, we know it can help individuals reflect, unpack challenging emotions, and establish mindful habits.”

Headspace has a variety of mental health and wellbeing tools available in its consumer app downloaded by over 100 million people globally. Earlier this year, the company added the availability of mental health coaching for purchase directly by consumers after providing that service for the past decade to its enterprise and health plan customers. Since then, it has added more meditation and mental health content to its in-app library to support members through key life moments, like navigating a fertility journey and coping with election stress. In the coming months, the company plans to launch therapy services for consumers and will accept a variety of insurance plans.

For more information on Ebb, visit headspace.com/ebb. Ebb is available to consumer subscribers in the U.S. and not yet available to those who have Headspace as a benefit from their employer or health plan.

To learn more about Headspace’s AI philosophy, visit headspace.com/ai.

FAQ

Can Ebb be used to treat mental health conditions?

No, Ebb is a sub-clinical support tool designed to assist people with deeper self-reflection and emotional processing. It is not intended to be used in a clinical capacity and does not give mental health advice or diagnoses.

How does Headspace protect the privacy of my conversations with Ebb?

We take the responsibility of safeguarding our members’ information extremely seriously. As a mental health company, we’re committed to protecting our members’ privacy like we would our own – not only because it’s required by law, but because it’s the right thing to do. We outline in our privacy policy the information we collect, why we ask for it, and how we use it. With regard to interactions with Ebb, all messages are encrypted end-to-end and no reflections are used for targeted advertising purposes. Headspace members choose whether or not to engage with Ebb.

What kind of safety controls does Ebb have in place?

Ebb was built with safety at the core. We conducted extensive in-house testing to ensure Ebb stays within a set of defined conversational guardrails to keep members safe. Ebb relies on an “always on” listening mechanism during a member’s reflection to detect risky utterances that could be related to suicidal ideation, homicidal ideation, self-harm, abuse or neglect, eating disorders, and substance abuse. In the event Ebb detects these areas of risk, Ebb populates a message encouraging members to contact 988 or 911. If a member wants to contact crisis services at any time while using Ebb, they can click a button that automatically initiates their device to call or text the 988 lifeline.

About Headspace

Headspace is your lifelong guide to better mental health. We make mental health support accessible to everyone, no matter their background or experience. Through our flagship Headspace app, we provide mindfulness and mental health tools for everyday life, like guided meditations, sleepcasts, mindful movement, and mental health coaching. Our enterprise offerings combine this experience with EAP and work-life services, as well as therapy and psychiatry services – all in a single destination. Our team of experts ranges from mental health clinicians to Emmy award-winning producers, and data scientists, working together as one to help millions of people around the world be healthier and more productive. To learn more, please visit headspace.com.