Security and Privacy Perceptions of Mental Health Chatbots

Mental health chatbots are AI chatbots that aim to mimic human conversations about how a user feels, help a user work through issues they are facing, suggest wellness exercises to complete, and help track a user's mood over time. We compare the information disclosure practices and security and privacy concerns of adopters and non-adopters of mental health chatbots. We conducted a survey with 180 participants (30 adopters, 150 non-adopters), collecting data about what information they would hypothetically disclose to mental health chatbots, and concerns they had related to chatbots. We found that compared to non-adopters, adopters were more trusting of chatbots, were willing to reveal more information, perceived security and privacy risks to be less likely, and took fewer precautions.