Slingshot pulls therapy chatbot Ash out of UK over regulatory concerns

Mario Aguilar covers know-how in well being care, together with synthetic intelligence, digital actuality, wearable units, telehealth, and digital therapeutics. His tales discover how tech is altering the observe of well being care and the enterprise and coverage challenges to realizing tech’s promise. He’s additionally the co-author of the free, twice weekly STAT Well being Tech publication. You may attain Mario on Sign at mariojoze.13.

Slingshot AI will withdraw its remedy chatbot app Ash from the UK this week over considerations that it runs afoul of the nation’s medical system rules.

Slingshot CEO Daniel Reid Cahn wrote in an electronic mail to customers that “there isn’t a transparent regulatory pathway for wellbeing merchandise like ours — and with out that readability, we will’t function with confidence.” He stated the app won’t be accessible after Jan. 23 and that the corporate is in conversations with the federal government on a treatment. Representatives for Slingshot didn’t reply to a request for remark.

Slingshot, which has raised $93 million from traders together with Andreessen Horowitz, has been among the many most aggressive to push out a big language model-based psychological well being product to shoppers amid broad concern that generative synthetic intelligence chatbots could be harmful for folks with psychological well being points.