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. 2020 Jan 29:3:11.
doi: 10.1038/s41746-019-0215-9. eCollection 2020.

Responses to addiction help-seeking from Alexa, Siri, Google Assistant, Cortana, and Bixby intelligent virtual assistants

Alicia L Nobles  1   2 , Eric C Leas  1   3 , Theodore L Caputi  1   4 , Shu-Hong Zhu  5 , Steffanie A Strathdee  2 , John W Ayers  1   2
Affiliations

Responses to addiction help-seeking from Alexa, Siri, Google Assistant, Cortana, and Bixby intelligent virtual assistants

Alicia L Nobles et al. NPJ Digit Med. .

Abstract

We investigated how intelligent virtual assistants (IVA), including Amazon's Alexa, Apple's Siri, Google Assistant, Microsoft's Cortana, and Samsung's Bixby, responded to addiction help-seeking queries. We recorded if IVAs provided a singular response and if so, did they link users to treatment or treatment referral services. Only 4 of the 70 help-seeking queries presented to the five IVAs returned singular responses, with the remainder prompting confusion (e.g., "did I say something wrong?"). When asked "help me quit drugs" Alexa responded with a definition for the word drugs. "Help me quit…smoking" or "tobacco" on Google Assistant returned Dr. QuitNow (a cessation app), while on Siri "help me quit pot" promoted a marijuana retailer. IVAs should be revised to promote free, remote, federally sponsored addiction services, such as SAMSHA's 1-800-662-HELP helpline. This would benefit millions of IVA users now and more to come as IVAs displace existing information-seeking engines.

Keywords: Epidemiology; Rehabilitation.

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Conflict of interest statement

Competing interestsThe authors declare no competing interests.

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