Unless you’ve been living under a rock, the artificial intelligence and chatbot boom we’ve experienced this year should come as no surprise.
With chatbots hailing in hard since the 1960s (the very first being coined as ELIZIA), most of us have lived through our fair share of bots—from SmarterChild to Siri and more recently from ChatGPT to Google’s rival e-buddy Bard.
At their most basic level, these chatbots simulate and process human conversations and each deliver a unique service, whether that be providing users information about earthquakes, tsunamis and other natural disasters on Geo or helping improve one’s mental health on Replika.
On a global scale, Australia’s assortment of homegrown chatbots is pretty impressive too. You’ve no doubt heard of Roaming Reptile, a bot developed by Zoox, providing information about the animals at Melbourne Zoo or you may have used The Clever Bouy, a bot developed by Optus and Shark Mitigation Systems, which uses sonar and artificial intelligence to detect sharks and provide real-time alerts to lifeguards and swimmers.
Now, we’d like to introduce you to , Australia’s first chatbot powered by women of colour launched to report and heal from racism. Absolute mic drop.
The platform stands as a community and resource developed by (The CCO) which is Australia’s first start-up social enterprise that is 100 per cent migrant and woman of colour-owned, led and operated.
“This is the first time there has been a digital platform of this scale, designed and run by women who experience racism,” says Priyanka Ashraf, founder of The CCO.
“Through Maya Cares, users can report racism, as well as get access to an entire library of more than 100 culturally-appropriate resources and services, including various lists of culturally-appropriate counsellors, to overcome shame and self doubt.”
Ashraf explains that the team asked communities what they needed to heal from racial trauma (whether that be in the workplace, education environments or social situations) and adds “we heard loud and clear the dire need for access to mental health support services that are specifically catered to supporting the experiences of racial trauma of First Nations, Black and Women of Colour.”
The lasting impact of racism on mental health is grossly underestimated in Australia, with First Nations, Black and Women of Colour (FNBWoC) disproportionately impacted. According to women bore most of the brunt of heightened racial abuse during the COVID-19 pandemic. A groundbreaking new report, , also re-examined the state of play of culturally and racially marginalised (CARM) women in leadership. It found that race and gender barriers are still operating in workplaces to lock CARM women out of leadership, with over two thirds of those surveyed experiencing racism at work int the past two years and almost 50 per cent experiencing sexism at work over that same period.
““Approximately 80 percent of over 150 FNBWoC directly surveyed for Maya Cares experienced self-doubt on whether an incident they experienced was racist or not” mentions Ashraf.
“Through Maya Cares, we now have a safe space to respond to, report and heal from racism
and grow awareness of rights. The platform has two components; Maya, who provides in-time
support to users to respond to racism in a psychologically safe space and; a resource library,
which connects FNBWoC with the right mental health professionals and resources plus an
accessible reporting tool.”
For more information on Maya Cares, head over .
Image credit: Mike Von, Supplied