The WhatsApp chatbot is aimed squarely at adolescent girls and young women in India's Hindi belt.
The artificial intelligence (AI) based chatbot 'Bol Behen' (colloquial Hindi for 'Speak, Sister') was launched in India on Wednesday by WhatsApp and the NGO Girl Effect to assist adolescent girls and young women with concerns and questions about general health and sexual wellbeing. In a self-paced chat experience on the instant messaging app, the Hinglish language chatbot is aimed to give material on issues such as sexuality, relationships, and reproductive health. Users can also pose their own questions on a variety of subjects.
Users can contact the Bol Behen chatbot by sending a WhatsApp message to +91-7304496601 or viewing its profile on the web.
The new chatbot, according to the Facebook-owned messaging service, is aimed at adolescent girls and young women in India's Hindi belt, who often use low-end devices with inadequate Internet access.
Bol Behen intends to leverage WhatsApp's architecture to gain a better understanding of the emotion of the messages it receives in order to respond to users more precisely. It is also expected to reach millions of girls across India in the future, answering their health-related questions and concerns and connecting them to authorised providers.
Girl Effect introduced the Bol Behen chatbot on Facebook Messenger in India for the first time in 2020. It is stated that it has grown to over 100,000 discussions and 1.6 million messages received. The chatbot is modelled after Girl Effect's first chatbot, Big Sis, which was introduced in South Africa to provide nonjudgmental advise on themes such as sexual health and relationships.
"Through connection with curated and vetted providers, WhatsApp's technology allows us to forge closer links between girls and the health services they need, providing content that solves her concerns and encourages her to access healthcare," Kanishk Kabiraj, Girl Effect Country Lead for India, said in a prepared statement."In the future, this will enable us to provide more seamless, personalised healthcare journeys — for example, allowing girls to arrange visits, receive reminders, and share comments all within Bol Behen."
Girl Effect uses chatbots, chat programmes, and TV dramas to reach girls and young women in Africa and Asia, providing them with information about their bodies and health. In India, it also operates the digital brand Chhaa Jaa, which caters to lower-income adolescent girls in the Hindi belt. It was launched in 2019 and has a global reach of over 10 million young women.
WhatsApp's chatbots are becoming more popular as a way to provide automated, human-like discussions to its users. The app has incorporated chatbots to assist customers with booking COVID-19 immunizations, fighting pollution, and even booking cab trips.
