The new AI chatbot designed to help us report harassment at work

The chatbot’s “cognitive interview” uses the same method police use to interview witnesses. It is designed to safeguard against bias, and to prevent memories becoming contaminated.

“It’s a fact-finding, non-accusatorial, neutral way of asking people what happened, which starts with open recall,” Shaw explains. “Tell me everything you remember. Then getting more precise and asking people to follow up on things they’ve mentioned,” she says.

A version for companies was launched last Tuesday, designed to be used in human-resource departments. “We don’t store your chat, we don’t store your data,” she explains. “The point is to give you a safe space.”

Of course, Spot is still one person’s word against another’s. It is still speaking in terms of record, rather than evidence. It’s a robot, a tool, which is not airtight.

Though Shaw’s studies have shown that the app improves memory accuracy by 40 per cent when compared to interviews conducted between people. Her research has made her an expert in false memories, and she points to the many factors that can contaminate a memory in interpersonal interviews, whether that’s leading questions, or an inappropriate interviewing style, the implicit and explicit biases of the people interviewing you, or the natural decay of memory. Simply retelling a story can have an effect: the first time you tell your story to someone their reactions, be they positive, negative or simply bored, can amplify or mute aspects of your account the next time you tell it, accordingly.

Shaw says it is also a way to safeguard against any unconscious bias. “Spot isn’t going to have the same assumptions because it doesn’t care what you look like. It doesn’t try to evaluate or guess whether what you’re telling is accurate or not, it’s just recording what happened.”

The app is in beta testing and has not yet been used in a court of law yet, to Shaw’s knowledge, although she says there’s no reason it won’t be admissible evidence. Although it’s most effective when used to record facts contemporaneously, Shaw says it can be used effectively in historical incidents, too — such as the US Senate hearing of Dr Christine Blasey Ford, who alleged an assault by US Justice Brett Kavanaugh decades before. “I think it would have completely changed the course of that case,” she says.

Shaw is based in London but is familiar with the structural problems prevalent in Silicon Valley. “Silicon Valley and the tech world are struggling to accept that harassment and discrimination happen even in what are supposed to be these fun, non-hierarchical spaces.”

Last week, it emerged that Topshop owner Philip Green had been accused of bullying and harassment by former employees, claims he has denied. We speak before the scandal unfolds, but Shaw says is the retail, service and fashion industries that most concern her. “These workers actually work frontline, bear the brunt of the harassment and have nowhere to go,” she says. “They haven’t had a #MeToo moment in the same way as people who in these higher paid, higher power industries.”