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Chatbot for Online Support Groups to Treat Tobacco Addiction
Sponsor: University of California, Irvine
Summary
Investigators will conduct a pilot RCT to test the efficacy of an intelligent chatbot to aid small, private, quit-smoking peer support groups. Participants will be randomized to an intervention arm (chatbot-enhanced support group), or a control arm (support group only). In the intervention arm (N=60), each support group will be connected to an intelligent chatbot running on a secure local server as a trained LLM (large language model). The intelligent chatbot will function as an additional member of the GroupMe support group, but a member that only responds if no human does so. In the control arm (N=60), the support groups will be connected to an automated message-posting bot running on a secure local server. This automated message-posting bot will lack the response capabilities of the intelligent chatbot. But both the intelligent chatbot and the automated message-posting bot will post a pre-written daily discussion topic to encourage participants to discuss issues known to facilitate tobacco cessation or group bonding.
Official title: Intelligent Chatbot for Online Support Groups to Treat Tobacco Addiction
Key Details
Gender
All
Age Range
18 Years - 75 Years
Study Type
INTERVENTIONAL
Enrollment
120
Start Date
2026-12-01
Completion Date
2028-06-01
Last Updated
2025-05-11
Healthy Volunteers
Yes
Conditions
Interventions
online quit-smoking support group with intelligent chatbot
In the intervention arm (N=60), each quit-smoking peer support group will be connected to an intelligent chatbot running on a secure local server as a trained LLM (large language model). This chatbot will monitor all posts in the group and seek to comprehend these posts using the training it has been provided. If a group member makes a post and no one responds with about 10 seconds, the chatbot will respond using one of its 25 response libraries created from knowledge bases, which contain over 1k responses in total. In effect, the intelligent chatbot will function as an additional member of the GroupMe support group, but a member that only responds if no human does so.
online quit-smoking support group with unintelligent bot
In the control arm (N=60), the support groups will be connected to our original automated message-posting bot running on our secure local server. This automated message-posting bot will lack the response capabilities of the intelligent chatbot; it will not respond to posts if no human group member does but, instead, remain silent. However, it will post the same daily discussion topic, and at the same time of day, as the intelligent chatbot.