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Technology
Talk uses AI as an accessibility layer — a way to make the first step smaller. It is not a therapist, it does not pretend to be, and the whole design is built around that distinction.
Scope
The most important thing about a mental health AI is the list of things it refuses to do.
What the companion does
What it will never do
Principles
Because Talk operates in the mental wellbeing space, these are foundational rather than secondary.
AI complements professional support; it does not stand in for a practitioner. Qualified humans remain central to counselling and to any higher-risk situation.
You always know when you are talking to AI. It is labelled on screen throughout the conversation, not buried in terms you agreed to once.
Where a conversation suggests possible immediate danger, the platform surfaces emergency and crisis resources straight away rather than continuing the conversation.
The companion operates inside an explicit scope. When a question falls outside it, it says so and points toward a professional.
AI outputs are reviewed for safety, bias, cultural relevance and potentially harmful responses — an ongoing process, not a launch checklist.
Support should not require speaking English. Wolof and other local Gambian languages are a design goal, introduced only where quality can be assured.
Honesty
Voice AI in Wolof, Mandinka and Pulaar is not yet reliable enough to carry an emotionally sensitive conversation. We are designing for those languages from the start, but we would rather ship English well than ship four languages badly.
AI safety detection is imperfect. It can miss genuine distress and it can flag ordinary turns of phrase. That is why the crisis pathway always surfaces real emergency contacts rather than relying on a model’s judgement, and why human review sits behind it.
Conversations are encrypted in transit and at rest. They are not end-to-end encrypted — our infrastructure provider holds the keys. We would rather state that plainly than imply a stronger guarantee than we can deliver.
Talk is not an emergency service
Read more
Our safety and privacy commitments, in plain language.