"My boss keeps making lewd suggestions and keeps brushing up against me inappropriately, is this sexual harassment?"
"Yes, this would likely be considered sexual harassment," answers a new artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot, which aims to help people find out if they are being harassed in the workplace or at universities.
The tool was created by two women in the United Kingdom and will officially launch on International Women's Day, March 8.
"One of the main reasons that people don't report sexual harassment is that they don't know whether they've been subject to it or not," co-founder Ruth Sparkes told Euronews Next.
"We wanted to create something that not only gave victims a voice but also helped institutions create safer environments".
The chatbot is a new addition to accompany an app called SaferSpace, founded by Sparkes and Sunita Gordon.
It is also meant to help anyone who is a victim of harassment or racism as it was trained on the UK's Equality Act.
Giving back the power
Sparkes said the idea for the chatbot came from her personal experience of harassment in the workplace.
"My boss actually grabbed me by my leather jacket and pulled me close and really shouted at me in front of everybody. I thought my boss was an idiot anyway, and I just brushed it off and carried on," she said.
However, another colleague had reported it to the HR department, which she said made her feel intimidated.
"I think because they [HR] were women in suits, and I probably just didn't want to talk about it because the power had been taken away because I didn't report it.
"Somebody else saw it happen and reported it. So I had lost any power at that point as well," she said.
Globally, more than one in five people (almost 23 per cent) in employment have experienced violence and harassment at work, whether physical, psychological, or sexual, according to a 2022 report by the United Nations’ International Labour Organization.
While the chatbot aims to help people report any form of inappropriate behaviour, harassment, discrimination, or racism, the founders also want companies and universities to better understand the situation.
"They'll [HR departments] be able to see where there are patterns," said Sparkes.
"If you've got a particular member of staff that is behaving in a particular way to a certain group of people, then you might want to put in more training or it might be so serious that there needs disciplinary process, but it will actually highlight where the hotspots are".
Several companies have already signed up to pilot SaferSpace, with many of them being legal, education, and financial firms.
The technology is only available in the UK for now but Sparkes said there has been interest from the United States and the Nordics.
