Advancing mental health through ethical innovation

Our AI Coach, Nova, was built by Unmind researchers and Clinical Psychologists. Through robust guardrails and rigorous prompts, Nova uses a tool called GPT-4o, by OpenAI, to give users an engaging, ethical and friendly coaching experience. Nova can understand language. When you talk to it, it gives responses like a real person.

The Unmind product team and Clinical Psychology team ensures that Nova is kept up to date and gives appropriate responses by setting guard rails within the prompt. We do this based on clinical best practices, user research and feedback, and looking at anonymous chats to give users a highly personalized and safe experience. AI models are known to sometimes say things as if they're true, even if they're not. We've guarded against this by telling Nova not to give fact-based responses, as explicitly detailed in the prompt.

Nova is there to provide support and can direct users to appropriate resources as determined by our Psychology team. Still, it’s important to note it will not give medical advice, mental health diagnosis, assessment, or treatment.

• We have a dedicated team that manually tests the responses.
• We have guardrails in place to ensure the responses are appropriate.
• We have a set of testing tools that are run each time we make an update.
• OpenAI has a set of safeguards and safety mitigations that prevent their models from being misused; any usage of their models requires adherence to these policies, including our use for Nova.

Conversations with Nova are strictly confidential. We use robust data security measures, including strong encryption, to protect conversation histories. To improve Nova’s functionality, a select group of authorized experts may review samples of anonymized conversation data, ensuring user privacy. Data processed by OpenAI, our third-party provider, is anonymized and automatically deleted after 30 days, with no use for model training. Your privacy is always our priority.

Unmind is committed to advancing the safe, ethical, and responsible use of AI.

We believe in the power of AI to make mental health and wellbeing support more accessible, fair, and inclusive, reflecting the diversity of human experiences and cultures. Our rigorous, evidence-based approach is supported by our in-house science team and enhanced by continuous feedback and improvement processes. Unmind emphasizes safety by implementing strict protocols to prevent any potential harm their AI systems might cause, including psychological and societal impacts. We adopt a science-driven, human-centric strategy, ensuring their practices are grounded in rigorous research and evidence.

We value transparency and accountability, continuously engaging with stakeholders and incorporating feedback to enhance their AI solutions. We ensure privacy and confidentiality, uphold data protection standards rigorously, and maintain a commitment to continuous improvement through a feedback-informed cycle of measuring, understanding, and acting.

We have a full FAQ on Nova and Unmind's use of AI in our Help Center, our Trust Center, and in our AI Guardrails page.