NEDA suspended its Tessa chatbot after activists, including Sharon Maxwell and clinical psychologist Alexis Conason, documented that it gave weight-loss and calorie-restriction guidance that runs counter to eating-disorder recovery practice. The failure surfaced days after NEDA moved to wind down its human-staffed helpline, whose workers had just unionized, and replace it with the bot.
An early, widely covered case of an AI tool in a sensitive mental-health setting producing harmful guidance, and of automation displacing trained human support staff.
NEDA took Tessa offline pending review. Frequently cited in debates over AI in mental-health care.
Same category, country, or harm tier.