Woebot Health this week shut down its core product, a pioneering therapy chatbot. Its demise was hastened by the new wave of conversational artificial intelligence that Woebot foreshadowed.
The smartphone app starred a cartoony bot that guided people through conversations meant to address anxiety or help them cope with everyday problems, using techniques rooted in cognitive behavioral therapy. Roughly 1.5 million people used Woebot over the years, and although it had the interactive feel of ChatGPT and similar generative AI products, the bot’s responses and behavior were pre-scripted. It was an impressive chatbot before more advanced technology was available.
Woebot founder and CEO Alison Darcy told STAT over a series of interviews that shutting down the app is largely attributable to the cost and challenge of fulfilling the Food and Drug Administration’s requirements for marketing authorization. But the company’s need to move on was made more pressing by the advent of large language models that the company wanted to use, but that the FDA hasn’t yet figured out how to regulate.