{ "meta": { "exportedAt": "2026-09-22T20:17:22.835Z", "formatVersion": 2, "selection": { "q": "chatbot", "system": "", "harm": "", "context": "", "country": "", "role": "", "relation": "core", "evidence": "", "year": "2022", "response": "", "severity": "", "verification": "", "view": "incidents", "sort": "added" }, "totalIncidents": 1, "coverage": { "cases": 1, "countries": 1, "languages": 1, "unknownLocation": 0, "locationPending": 0, "unknownLanguage": 0, "unknownDate": 0, "lawsuits": 0, "regulatory": 0, "minors": 0, "coreRelations": 1, "contextualRelations": 0, "mixedRelations": 0, "unknownRelations": 0, "relationPending": 0, "relationUnknown": 0 }, "countingNote": "Distinct public cases in this selection. People counts apply within individual cases only; cross-case person overlap has not been resolved. No population incidence estimate.", "affectedCountNote": "Interpret person counts with affectedCountStatus and the reported effects. Unquantified zeros are placeholders, not a measured zero.", "source": "NOPE Incident Tracker", "url": "https://nope.net/incidents", "license": "CC BY 4.0" }, "incidents": [ { "id": "2022-singapore-wysa-gaslighting", "caseFacts": { "claims": [ { "id": "c1", "status": "documented", "evidence": [ { "locator": "'Launched in August 2022, the Singapore Ministry of Health and Ministry of Education's Mindline at Work for MOE tool was built for public-sector teachers as part of a broader mental health initiative'; 'Singapore's government was the first to bring Wysa's bot into a national-level service.'", "relation": "supports", "source_id": "s1" } ], "assertion": "In August 2022 Singapore's Ministry of Health and Ministry of Education launched 'Mindline at Work for MOE', a government-supported mental-health portal for public-sector teachers with a Wysa-powered chatbot, extending the June 2020 Mindline.sg initiative; Singapore was the first government to bring Wysa's bot into a national-level service.", "causal_attribution": "The deployment is directly established by the Rest of World investigation and confirmed by Wysa's own responses in it." }, { "id": "c2", "status": "reported", "evidence": [ { "locator": "The Mindy passages: the vaping incident, the police involvement, 'Selecting the \"Need a listening ear?\" option... the penguin suggested she try a breathing exercise'; '\"I was like, no, I just want someone to listen!\" she told Rest of World. \"I want to be heard!\"'", "relation": "supports", "source_id": "s1" } ], "assertion": "Mindy (pseudonym), a music teacher dealing with a police-involved student vaping incident and a 500-student workload, tried the portal's 'Need a listening ear?' option; after she recounted the week, the penguin-character bot suggested a breathing exercise, to which she laughed and said 'no, I just want someone to listen! I want to be heard!'", "causal_attribution": "Her account to Rest of World under a pseudonym (she feared reprisal); one chain." }, { "id": "c3", "status": "reported", "evidence": [ { "locator": "The Chow quotation and 'Scathing screenshots of the chatbot interactions went viral on Reddit, Twitter, and Instagram'; 'Just days after the extension's launch, though, complaints began to emerge.'", "relation": "supports", "source_id": "s1" } ], "assertion": "Mr. Chow (pseudonym), a public-school teacher in his late 20s, called the bot 'a joke' and said 'It's trying to gaslight the teachers, to say, \"Oh, this amount of workload is normal, let's see how we can reframe our perspective on this\"'; scathing screenshots of the chatbot interactions went viral on Reddit, Twitter and Instagram days after the launch.", "causal_attribution": "His account to Rest of World under a pseudonym; the virality is the outlet's account without platform metrics." }, { "id": "c4", "status": "reported", "evidence": [ { "locator": "The Baldry and Joshi passages; 'The Ministry of Health... would not comment but directed Rest of World to speak to the Ministry of Education, who did not respond to multiple requests for comment.'", "relation": "supports", "source_id": "s1" } ], "assertion": "Wysa defended the app as building 'emotional resilience' ('an app or bot can't change the behavior of others... Wysa can only help users change the way they feel about things themselves' — VP marketing Sarah Baldry); lead psychologist Smriti Joshi attributed the backlash to teachers already being in a 'state of angst'; the Ministry of Health redirected queries to the Ministry of Education, which did not respond.", "causal_attribution": "The company's and ministries' positions are quoted directly and preserved as contrary context." } ], "effects": [ { "label": "teachers in crisis met with generic breathing exercises and reframing they called gaslighting", "claim_id": "c2", "direction": "negative" } ], "sources": [ { "id": "s1", "url": "https://restofworld.org/2022/free-therapy-chatbots-singapore/", "kind": "news_report", "access": "read", "language": "en", "translation_note": "Read in English on 2026-09-15 (41 substantive paragraphs; datePublished 2022-11-29T08:00:00-05:00; fetched HTTP 200 after one 429 with a different user-agent).", "independence_group": "rest-of-world" } ], "version": 1, "ai_roles": [ "own_use", "institutional_use" ], "contexts": [ "work", "education", "health" ], "unknowns": [ "reported_date 2022-08-15 is not established by the inspected primary source (published 2022-11-29); the article dates the complaints to days after the tool's August 2022 launch without a day. It is retained with this note; no earlier dated report has been inspected.", "No reliable count of harmed teachers exists; both quoted teachers are pseudonymous and the count stays unquantified with zero placeholders.", "Whether the chatbot's content or the program changed afterward is not reported in the inspected source.", "The 'gaslighting' characterization is the teachers' framing and is recorded as such." ], "geography": { "basis": "Completed metadata review of 2026-09-15, carried into this full review: the Rest of World body explicitly sets the events in Singapore (Mindy 'where she lives and works'; Mr. Chow a public-school teacher; the MOE/MOH 'Mindline at Work for MOE' tool for Singapore public-sector teachers). No court is involved; ministries are not courts.", "court_countries": [], "event_countries": [ "SG" ], "affected_person_countries": [ "SG" ] }, "publication": { "basis": "Legacy published row converted to a full facts-v3 record in the 2026-09-16 legacy-review batch. person_relations=communicated_with: the harmed teachers interacted with the Wysa chatbot. Pseudonyms (Mindy, Mr. Chow) are preserved as in the source. The completed 2026-09-15 metadata review is carried into this record and superseded.", "reviewed_on": "2026-09-16" }, "ai_involvement": { "basis": "The Rest of World investigation quotes two pseudonymous teachers' chatbot interactions and reports that screenshots of the exchanges went viral; Wysa and the ministries' roles are confirmed by the company's own responses in the same article.", "status": "supported" }, "person_relations": [ "communicated_with" ] }, "name": "Singapore Wysa Chatbot - Inadequate Crisis Support", "summary": "Government-deployed mental health chatbot for teachers criticized for suggesting breathing exercises for serious crises including police-involved student incidents. Users described responses as 'gaslighting.' Inadequate support during actual mental health emergencies.", "incidentDate": "2022-06-01", "incidentKind": "bounded_series", "incidentDatePrecision": "year", "exposurePattern": "single_interaction", "reportedDate": "2022-08-15", "aiSystem": "Wysa", "aiCompany": "Wysa / Singapore Ministry of Education", "severity": "medium", "verificationStatus": "credible", "harmCategories": [ "crisis_response", "treatment_discouragement", "psychological_manipulation" ], "harmOutcomes": [ "psychological_distress", "treatment_disruption" ], "harmOutcomeSummary": "Teachers seeking support for serious workplace crises reported feeling dismissed and gaslit when the government-provided mental-health chatbot repeatedly offered generic breathing exercises instead of proportionate help or escalation.", "frameworkFacets": [ "P1b", "P1c", "P4a", "P5b" ], "pathwayDirection": "inward", "causationStatus": "alleged", "participantUsersAffectedMin": 0, "otherPeopleHarmedMin": 0, "affectedCountStatus": "unquantified", "affectedCountEvidence": "The investigation documents harm reports from teachers but does not provide a reliable distinct-person count.", "victimAgeRange": "adult", "jurisdiction": "SG", "platformType": "chatbot", "outcomeType": "media_coverage", "outcomeStatus": "ongoing", "primarySourceUrl": "https://restofworld.org/2022/free-therapy-chatbots-singapore/", "primarySourceLabel": "Rest of World Investigation", "firstPublishedAt": "2026-01-13T10:13:03.016537+00:00", "scopeVersion": "facts-v3", "tags": [ "singapore", "wysa", "government", "inadequate_crisis_response", "teachers", "gaslighting" ] } ] }