Eve: Workplace Stress AI Coach

The app only highlights, rather than productively channel, the limitations of AI. The first time I tried to use it, it immediately did not work as it would not let me move past the initial home page. I restarted it and then it took me to the next page on this second trial. I still approached it with an open mind. The app consists of a chatbot made to ask questions about mental health and stress. If you have used ChatGPT, Gemini, or any other of the popular AI platforms to inquire about mental health, you will quickly find that there is little difference between those systems and the service Eve is advertised to provide. First, it gave me the option to use a technique called “brain dumping” or to manage my case. Since it encouraged me to use the former, I went ahead and did that. This consisted of basically saying everything that was on my mind. Eve asked me what event caused me stress, which was not useful to me because there is not a single event, rather a compilation of things. This showed already a basic lack of complexity in its awareness of how stress functions. Then it simply asked a series of generic follow up questions that seem to be taken from any stereotypical idea of what a therapist would say. The questions were so generic and there was little evidence Eve was taking the specifics of my answers into account. The solutions offered by Eve or plan of action simply consisted of the most basic types of mental health treatment: find a therapist, eat well, exercise, try CBT, etc. When I told Eve I was already engaging in these practices, she suggested a couple more and repeated some of the same. The action plan she developed then consisted of a lot of the practices I mentioned I already do, with little insight or specificity tailored to my concerns and situation. The voice feature is not great. The bot does not fully understand each word and makes odd revisions or deductions. I tried to edit my answers and then it would instead send the incomplete answer. It was also difficult to modify earlier parts of the conversation for accuracy. I do not recommend this app. The developer promises something useful and specific in the App description. The experience itself is simply frustrating, generic, and barely useful, which is a real shame.