One in four Australian women has experienced physical or sexual violence by an intimate partner. One in four.
Yet be it due to stigma, to fear of retaliation or not being believed, Australian Bureau of Statistics data shows that more than 80 per cent of these women don’t report that violence to police and 39 per cent had never sought any kind of advice or support.
It’s figures like these that have prompted online legal service LawPath to create Deevi, an anonymous web-based program that uses artificial intelligence to provide victims with information about available support services, their rights and how the law can protect them.
Speaking to Mamamia, LawPath co-founder Dominic Woolrych said the program is built on IBM Watson, a sophisticated AI system that allows users to have real-time, natural-language conversation with the Deevi ‘chatbot’.
The bot asks the user questions about what’s occurring in their relationship and then delivers appropriate information based on their responses.
“What Deevi does is pick up key words in the conversation and then run those key words against domestic violence legislation,” Woolrych explained. “At a very high level, she can come back and determine whether domestic violence might be present and then give you action plans about what you can do, how to protect yourself and most importantly, point you in the right direction.”
There is no risk of not being believed – Woolrych says users will always be directed to face-to-face services, regardless of what Deevi interprets from its conversation with them.
Born from a LawPath internship program, Deevi was created to bridge the gap between domestic violence victims and the (notably under-resourced) support services available to them.