Headspace Brings Empathetic AI Companion, Ebb, to UK Members
Conversational AI tool supports people through the ebbs and flows of life by helping them process their thoughts and emotions and find relevant meditation, mindfulness, and wellbeing content from the Headspace app
To date, U.S. members have exchanged over one million messages with Ebb, and in user feedback surveys, 64% have reported to have felt heard and understood by the AI companion
April 3, 2025
Today Headspace, the world’s leading comprehensive mental health app, released a feature called Ebb to UK members. Ebb is an empathetic AI companion integrated into the Headspace app that helps people navigate life's ups and downs, providing instant, personalised support designed to guide members through self-reflection and emotional processing.
Built by a team of clinical psychologists and data scientists, Ebb is a conversational AI tool trained in motivational interviewing, an evidence-based methodology that can help people make positive behavioral changes. With the support of Ebb, Headspace members can engage in deeper self-reflection, process thoughts and emotions, and receive personalised content recommendations from the vast Headspace library of thousands of meditations, mindfulness exercises, and wellbeing content. By serving up personalised content for the member’s current emotional state, Ebb allows members to seamlessly transition from reflection into a supportive, relevant exercise.
“For many, technology offers an opportunity to open up about their mental health in a way that feels less daunting. We designed Ebb to be an empathetic, non-judgmental listening ear for people through a variety of life circumstances” said Jenna Glover, Ph.D., Chief Clinical Officer at Headspace. “I wholeheartedly believe that AI and technology can play a transformative role in mental health care, not to replace human therapists; but rather, complementing and enhancing the existing system by ensuring the vast majority of people who need help have access to a safe, supportive, and ethical entry point for their mental health journey.”
Over the past decade, Headspace has used AI in its platform to reduce the administrative load on its care providers, identify safety risk in member chat conversations, and serve up relevant mental health and mindfulness content to its members. Its new feature, Ebb, was trained using a combination of large language models, as well as proprietary in-house datasets, which include curated interactions that reflect a broad range of emotions and life experiences.
“Conversational AI, when used thoughtfully, can transform the way mental health and wellbeing support is delivered by offering deeply personalized, timely companionship,” said Ritwik Bhattacharya, CTO at Headspace. “As with everything we do, we've taken a safety and privacy-first approach to designing Ebb. Our patented safety risk detection algorithms ensure the right guardrails are in place for protecting our members' mental health first and foremost. Over one million messages have already been exchanged with Ebb in the U.S., and we’re excited to bring this technology to our members across the pond.”
Designed with safety and privacy in mind, Ebb does not give mental health advice, guidance, or diagnoses, but rather prompts people to pause from their day to reflect on their thoughts and feelings. Research has found various benefits for processing emotions and self-reflection, including improvements on well-being, working memory, and resilience. Since the launch of Ebb, members who regularly use Ebb have shown 34% higher app engagement and content usage. Most conversations with Ebb to date have focused on relationship challenges, work frustrations, sleep, boundaries, and self-care.
Earlier this month, Headspace acquired a voice talk app called Supertalk, and has since onboarded the Supertalk team into critical product and engineering roles at Headspace. Over the coming months, the team will evolve Ebb’s conversational flow and abilities, expand its longitudinal memory capabilities, and integrate the ability to speak to Ebb via voice interactions.
For more information on Ebb, visit headspace.com/ebb. To learn more about Headspace’s AI philosophy, visit headspace.com/ai.
Frequently asked questions
No, Ebb is a sub-clinical support tool designed to assist people with deeper self-reflection and emotional processing. It is not intended to be used in a clinical capacity and does not give mental health advice or diagnoses.
We take the responsibility of safeguarding our members’ information extremely seriously. As a mental health company, we’re committed to protecting our members’ privacy like we would our own – not only because it’s required by law, but because it’s the right thing to do. We outline in our privacy policy the information we collect, why we ask for it, and how we use it. With regard to interactions with Ebb, all messages are encrypted end-to-end and no reflections are used for targeted advertising purposes. Headspace members choose whether or not to engage with Ebb.
Ebb was built with safety at the core. We conducted extensive in-house testing to ensure Ebb stays within a set of defined conversational guardrails to keep members safe. Ebb relies on an “always on” listening mechanism during a member’s reflection to detect risky utterances that could be related to suicidal ideation, homicidal ideation, self-harm, abuse or neglect, eating disorders, and substance abuse. In the event Ebb detects these areas of risk, Ebb populates a message encouraging members to contact their local emergency services, providing them with a list of resources by country.
About Headspace Headspace is your lifelong guide to better mental health. We make mental health support accessible to everyone, no matter their background or experience. Through our flagship Headspace app, we provide mental health coaching in addition to mindfulness and mental health tools for everyday life, like guided meditations, sleepcasts, mindful movement, and focus exercises. Our enterprise offerings combine this experience with EAP and work-life services, as well as therapy and psychiatry services – all in a single destination. Our team of experts ranges from mental health clinicians to Emmy award-winning producers and data scientists, working together as one to help millions of people around the world be healthier and more productive. To learn more, please visit headspace.com.
Contact
Naomi White
UK PR and Communications
Headspace
naomi.white@headspace.com
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