NEDA intended to close its human helpline on June 1 and sacked staff and other volunteers who maintained the alternative helpline for information and treatment.
An estimated 10% of Americans will develop the disorder in their lifetime, which is shrouded in secrecy and treatment can be expensive.
Ellen Fitzsimmons-Kraft, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Washington Medical School, and her team tried to develop a cognitive-behavioral tool to help people with eating disorders.
He told BBC News that the chatbot he designed is based on proven interventions that have been shown to be effective in reducing eating disorders and related behaviours.
“It was never intended to replace the helpline. It was a completely different service.” He handed over the program to Neda and a tech company last year to deploy it to clients where he believes a “bug” or flaw in his original design was introduced to make the algorithm function like recent AI tools like ChatGPT.
“Our study did not have that feature at all. This is not a program that we have developed, tested and shown to be effective,” he said.
