Seattle company uses AI chatbot to help treat dementia

Linzi Sheldon from KIRO 7 News generously spent time with NewDays member TJ and her daughter Andrea, as well as cofounder Daniel Kelly, to share their stories and give hope to millions that there IS something you can do to fight against cognitive decline.

Could an AI chatbot help people dealing with memory issues and early dementia? That's the goal of a new Seattle company using AI and telehealth to help millions of people in the US dealing with cognitive decline. KIRO 7's Lindsey Sheldon showing us Sunny and how it works.

"What kinds of colors or shapes do you notice in the flowers they're working with?"

"Mm, red, white and pink."

Meet TJ Pidgeon. That's her dog, Ginger, her daughter, Andrea, and this is Sunny.

"I would like to remind you that I am a software system."

Created by a Seattle company called NewDays, Sunny is an AI chatbot for people with mild dementia and cognitive decline.

"What do you generally talk with her about?"

"How I'm feeling and the fact that I love my little dog."

TJ is an active grandmother and great-grandmother, but in late 2023, Andrea says her family noticed a difference.

"'Cause the kids would be like, 'You know, she's at dinner and she's not even talking, like, what's going on? Is she there?'"

TJ began seeing a neurologist at Overlake, then this summer, she started NewDays.

"She's more intuitive and she's more talkative and I feel like she's getting better."

"Does it feel like when you're facing something like this, it's like, why not try?"

"For sure. It brings tears to my eyes that you just say that, but yeah."

"In my family, we call dementia the Kelly Curse."

Daniel Kelly and co-founder Babak Parviz are former engineers and leaders at Google and Amazon. Both have family histories of Alzheimer's.

"So the goal is not to have an AI companion, it's to use this tool to practice the conversational skills that you need to continue to interact with real people."

Patients like TJ meet with a cognitive therapist online regularly.

"How are you doing today?"

That, he says, is covered by Medicare. Sunny is not covered by insurance. $99 a month with prescribed exercises and discussions about happy memories.

"So really the conversations with Sunny are just an extension of working with the cognitive therapist."

NewDays licensed the methodology from a clinical trial out of Harvard. It found that regular semi-structured conversations with human interviewers online helped older adults with mild cognitive impairment.

"How do you know it works the same way when it's an AI chatbot?"

"Yeah. We cannot make any of the claims that the iConnect study does. While we follow that methodology, we will do our own clinical trials."

"There are two sides of my first reaction, so I immediately saw the promise."

Dr. Soo-In Lee is a UW professor with a focus on artificial intelligence, computing and biology. She and her team uncovered medical AI systems taking shortcuts on x-rays that could lead to misdiagnosis.

"The potential danger of over-trusting medical AI is the other side of my feeling."

Dr. Lee points out AI can hallucinate. She emphasizes the importance of updating AI models continually, clinical trials and...

"Error analysis also really important. Let's say that there is no improvement, then what do we do, right? So identifying the failure most and then revealing the reasons for this failure."

"Have you ever tried trimming or pruning your roses?"

"Mm, yes."

For TJ and Andrea...

"It's nothing but amazing."

Andrea says it's assurance that her mother is exercising her brain on any day when she can't be there.

"That it gives me a breath of fresh air knowing that she can just log in from the family room or the couch or her bed or whatever and talk to Sunny. Right?" "Mm-hmm."

See the full story at KIRO's website.