Eliza, a visual novel about algorithms and mental health, is out now

Eliza

Eliza is a visual novel about an AI counseling program, the people who develop it, and the people who use it. Follow Evelyn Ishino-Aubrey as she reconnects with people from her past, gets to know the people of Seattle who use Eliza for counseling, and decides the course of her future.

Here are two things that are currently a bit rubbish: the standard and availability of mental health care, and the quality of AI doing the job of a human. Would applying an AI bandaid do anything to touch the former problem, or make it worse? And is it a problem bad enough to give up a bunch of personal information to tech valley datacentres? These are some of the questions you ll be able to ponder while playing Eliza, a visual novel set in a world where an algorithm provides counselling to those in need via a human proxy who reads the script they re provided. It s about as creepy as it sounds, as you can see from the trailer below.

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