In a rapidly evolving landscape of health and wellness, the traditional notion of self care is undergoing a transformation. The latest research from the QUT Digital Wellbeing Lab delves into the intersection of innovative Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) and personal wellbeing, offering a glimpse into a future where AI becomes a pivotal ally in our self care journeys.
Recent studies conducted by a QUT research team led by Associate Professor Bernd Ploderer have uncovered a change in basic assumptions in how individuals engage with GenAI platforms like ChatGPT and Midjourney to enhance their self care routines. The study, comprising workshops, diaries, and interviews, included participants ranging in age from 19 to 64 years old. Where some participants used AI to help them train for a triathlon, others asked it for advice on emotional regulation, recovery from surgery, parenting, pregnancy, diet, sleep, and navigating social situations. Overall, it was found that individuals used it for five distinct practices: advice seeking, mentoring, resource creation, social simulation, and therapeutic self-expression.
Associate Professor Ploderer notes the biggest surprise in findings was participants using GenAI for social simulation. QUT alumnus and key member of the research team, Dr Tara Capel agrees, with another surprise being the insights that participants were able to draw from asking the AI to find correlations between their health and wellbeing data. “These are examples of how creative people can be when they find new ways of using techonology,” says Associate Professor Ploderer.
Advice Seeking
The most frequent practice was advice seeking, showing an increasing trend in people turning to ChatGPT for advice, favouring its ability to synthesise and personalise information.
This practice involves a participant prompting a platform like ChatGPT with a question, and the platform then generating a response to that question, with minimal follow-up from the participant.
The results of the research study showed this was vastly different to information seeking through search engines such as Google, as the interactions with GenAI are much more personalised and participants were able to frame questions in terms of their own situations and concerns. AI responses were also typically framed as suggestions rather than facts.
“One of the things we sought to explore was how well GenAI would respond to questions that were specific to a person’s culture," says Associate Professor Ploderer. “We found that the default response is typically framed through a Western perspective, which is not surprising given where the AI platforms are based and the training data that these platforms are built on.”
Advice seeking for self-care applied to a broad range of health and wellbeing topics, ranging from lifestyle questions such as managing stress during pregnancy, to medical advice on post-surgery care and digital wellbeing questions such as how to limit screentime.
Mentorship
Mentorship, a more advanced interaction than advice seeking, involves continuous and personalised engagement, acting as a complementary resource to human mentors.
Participants described GenAI as resembling the role of a human expert, such as a personal coach, an analyst to review sleep data, a counsellor, or the role of a friend or confidant. The key difference between advice seeking and mentorship was that mentorship involved ongoing interactions around different facets of the same concern over days and weeks.
For example, one participant started using ChatGPT as a triathlon coach, prompting it to create an 18-week training program for an Olympic distance triathlon, with a detailed program provided each week. Later, the participant re-prompted ChatGPT in the same thread to state that she was struggling to prioritise her training and asked for tips on how to better fit the triathlon training into her schedule. ChatGPT provided some strategies, one of which was to train in the morning before the workday started. She attempted this strategy but found that she was struggling to get up early enough to do the training and was lacking the motivation to exercise, which was unusual for her. As she had a pre-existing autoimmune condition that can cause fatigue, this prompted her to have it checked.
“In terms of expertise, mentorship provides a middle ground between AI and human expertise,” notes Associate Professor Ploderer. Speaking of how participants contested content that was inaccurate or did not apply, he notes, “GenAI can provide advice, but this is also balanced with the lived experience of the person; it does not entail blind trust.”
Resource Creation
Throughout their self care explorations, participants used GenAI to create personalised resources.
Almost half of participants used GenAI to create resources such as text-based prayer plans, guided meditations, short stories, sleep schedules, quizzes, images for colouring in or painting, and voice and sound for guided meditations.
“Guided meditations were very popular,” comments Associate Professor Ploderer. “With GenAI, you can personalise the content of a meditation to your circumstances – for example, asking the AI platform to create something to help you wind down from a busy day at work.”
Dr Tara Capel adds, “Resource creation is one of the practices that highlights the multi-modal strengths of Gen AI – people are able to create and engage with content in a way that is personalised to them.”
GenAI expertise can create resources that would require significant effort to produce manually but can be easily generated through AI. Some participants used GenAI to create or share resources to support or facilitate family and friend’s self-care practices. For example, one participant generated a personalised children’s story as a form of meditation to do with her four-year-old daughter as part of her bedtime routine, adapting it to her daughter’s humour and interests.
Social Simulation
The study also found that GenAI platforms can provide a safe space for users to experiment, improve skills, and navigate real-life scenarios.
One participant used ChatGPT to simulate social situations between himself and a character to test different actions until he achieved the desired outcomes.
Associate Professor Ploderer notes that such simulations can prove helpful for self-care in helping users work through social situations that they have experienced.
“AI simulations can give you a sense of control that you don’t have in real life; in real life, you have to respond to situations on the spot.” He adds, “AI allows you to role-play situations until you feel comfortable or reach the desired social outcome. It is a safe space for social simulation because AI does not judge – a particularly helpful feature when it comes to questions that require a person to disclose something personal.”
Therapeutic Self-Expression
Finally, a real strength of GenAI is that it supports therapeutic self-expression. Participants leveraged AI to turn written prompts into music and images, the platform offering a unique channel for creative self-expression and reflection on emotional states. This facilitated some users in creating images to reflect on their feelings and for others served as a form of creative expression and enjoyment. It also involved using GenAI to create music and to brainstorm prompts for journaling and ideas for a gratitude journal. The multi-modal capabilities of GenAI proved particularly important for therapeutic self-expression as it enabled participants without expertise in music composition, drawing, painting, and other creative pursuits to express themselves in creative ways.
The QUT research team leading the study emphasise that understanding these emerging practices will serve as a catalyst for designing innovative self care tools – a significant step towards unravelling the immense potential of GenAI in self care practices.
"As we begin to further understand these practices, the stage is set for a future where AI is not just a source of information but a dynamic ally in our journey towards health and wellbeing," concludes Associate Professor Ploderer.
“For future self-care tools that leverage GenAI, we see real potential in the direction of resource creation and therapeutic self-expression.”
Associate Professor Ploderer notes that both of these directions make the most of the creative potential of AI to generate images, sounds, and stories to support popular self-care activities like meditation and journalling.
“What’s most important is that AI not be used to imitate humans or encroach on the important role of friends or counselors in our lives. Instead, it’s an additional level of support to help us reflect and work through the unique skills and experiences that we as humans have acquired throughout our lives.”
To learn more about this research, contact Associate Professor Bernd Ploderer at b.ploderer@qut.edu.au