Support Buddy

Support Buddy is closely linked to Equally Safe Online and aims to create the first incarnation of ‘the Bot’ in real life.

It is an online safety tool that users download to protect themselves on social media. It uses AI to detect any gender-based violence in their social media feed and then takes action based on what the user has decided they want it to do. Users have a menu of actions to choose from – including blocking, reporting and getting help – all of which were designed with input from our expert partners and are carefully pre-scripted.

DEMO

Support Buddy is being developed in a 9-month project at Heriot-Watt with funding from an Impact Acceleration Award. The relatively small scale of the project means that we are building a Proof of Concept; initially, Support Buddy will deploy the AI model locally on the user’s computer and the tool will work using a Google Chrome browser on the social media platform X. This is the starting point from which we aim to demonstrate Support Buddy’s utility and powerful potential for tackling gender-based violence online, and by doing so, garner further support for its development.

We aim to launch the first version of Support Buddy via our partners’ networks in the Spring of 2026. Watch this space for more information!

And please, get in touch if you are interested in collaborating or have ideas on how we can keep this important work going.

Contact Dr Ioannis Konstas: I.Konstas@hw.ac or Dr Nancie Gunson: N.Gunson@hw.ac.uk

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