Venezuelan specialists work on a chatbot capable of detecting depression and anxiety
A group of specialists from the Andrés Bello Catholic University in Venezuela is working on an AI-powered chatbot to detect possible cases of anxiety and depression by interpreting users' language patterns
Venezuela could soon have a chatbot that integrates artificial intelligence to detect cases of depression and anxiety, thanks to the work of a group of researchers from the Center for Humanistic Research and Training (CIFH) at the Andrés Bello Catholic University in Venezuela (UCAB).
Recently, Professor Gustavo La Fontaine, professor, psychologist, and researcher at CIFH, indicated that work on the development of this chatbot has resumed, having been suspended due to budgetary issues.
He also highlighted the project’s objective: “to work with two artificial intelligence models. One, a chatbot. The other, a prediction model. The chatbot then engages in a conversation with the user and, in that process, begins collecting information. When it gathers enough information, it is sent to the second model, our prediction model, which will perform an assessment and try to determine if there are indicators of depression or anxiety in that language.”
Chatbot would be ready in the second quarter of 2026
According to the academic, if the chatbot detects a risk, “it will offer the user information to seek psychological help, mentioning resources such as the College of Psychologists in Ireland or the Federation of Psychologists of Venezuela.”
Regarding the status of this innovation, La Fontaine emphasized that it is in a preparation phase; that is, a robust database is being built for training the model with the support of AI.
The team of five specialists has worked on training models based on social media input “to predict emotions in speech with a good level of accuracy. The model recognizes five basic emotions: joy, anger, sadness, surprise, fear, and disgust.”
They estimate that the first demo of the chatbot will be ready by the second quarter of 2026, presenting a model that can run on basic computers, reducing processing costs, and becoming a tool on platforms of public interest “such as the website of the Venezuelan Federation of Psychologists or Psicodata of the UCAB.”
M.Pino
Source: elaragueno
(Main reference image source: BoliviaInteligente en Unsplash)
Visit our news channel on Google News and follow us to get accurate, interesting information and stay up to date with everything. You can also see our daily content on X/Twitter and Instagram
