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AI companion chatbots increasingly shape how people seek social and emotional connection, sometimes substituting for relationships with romantic partners, friends, teachers, or even therapists. When these systems adopt those metaphorical…
Counseling typically takes the form of spoken conversation between a therapist and a client. The empathy level expressed by the therapist is considered to be an essential quality factor of counseling outcome. This paper proposes a…
We introduce a general-purpose, human-in-the-loop dual dialogue system to support mental health care professionals. The system, co-designed with care providers, is conceptualized to assist them in interacting with care seekers rather than…
We present an end-to-end framework for generating synthetic users for evaluating interactive agents designed to encourage positive behavior changes, such as in health and lifestyle coaching. The synthetic users are grounded in health and…
Current technologies have enabled us to track and quantify our physical state and behavior. Self-tracking aims to achieve increased awareness to decrease undesired behaviors and lead to a healthier lifestyle. However, inappropriately…
We argue that accountability mechanisms are needed in human-AI agent relationships to ensure alignment with user and societal interests. We propose a framework according to which AI agents' engagement is conditional on appropriate user…
Learning difficulties pose significant challenges for students, impacting their academic performance and overall educational experience. These difficulties could sometimes put students into a downward spiral that lack of educational…
Mental health challenges are rising globally, while traditional support services face limited availability and high costs. Large language models offer potential for conversational support, but often lack personalization, empathy, and…
Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) can profoundly affect reciprocal social communication, resulting in substantial and challenging impairments. One aspect is that for people with ASD conversations in everyday life are challenging due to…
Online, people often recount their experiences turning to conversational AI agents (e.g., ChatGPT, Claude, Copilot) for mental health support -- going so far as to replace their therapists. These anecdotes suggest that AI agents have great…
Conversational agents (CAs) are revolutionizing human-computer interaction by evolving from text-based chatbots to empathetic digital humans (DHs) capable of rich emotional expressions. This paper explores the integration of neural and…
In the rapidly evolving field of artificial intelligence (AI) agents, designing the agent's characteristics is crucial for shaping user experience. This workshop aims to establish a research community focused on AI agent persona design for…
Advances in artificial intelligence (AI) are enabling systems that augment and collaborate with humans to perform simple, mechanistic tasks like scheduling meetings and grammar-checking text. However, such Human-AI collaboration poses…
Traditional neural network training typically follows fixed, predefined optimization recipes, lacking the flexibility to dynamically respond to instabilities or emerging training issues. In this paper, we introduce Interactive Training, an…
AI companion chatbots are increasingly used for emotional support, with prior work in the domain predominantly documenting their mixed psychosocial impacts, including both increased emotional expression and heightened loneliness. However,…
Mental health conversational agents have the potential to deliver valuable therapeutic impact, but low user engagement remains a critical barrier hindering their efficacy. Existing therapeutic approaches have leveraged clients' internal…
We present a novel framework designed to extend model reconciliation approaches, commonly used in human-aware planning, for enhanced human-AI interaction. By adopting a structured argumentation-based dialogue paradigm, our framework enables…
This study investigates the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI)-powered, multi-role chatbots as a means to enhance learning experiences and foster engagement in computer science education. Leveraging a design-based research approach, we…
Online peer-to-peer support platforms enable conversations between millions of people who seek and provide mental health support. If successful, web-based mental health conversations could improve access to treatment and reduce the global…
In this paper, we discuss the potential of applying unsupervised anomaly detection in constructing AI-based interactive systems that deal with highly contextual situations, i.e., human-human communication, in collaboration with domain…