Virtual Agents for Alcohol Use Counseling: Exploring LLM-Powered Motivational Interviewing

TL;DR

This paper presents a virtual counselor powered by large language models that can conduct motivational interviewing for alcohol use counseling, aiming to improve access and effectiveness of substance abuse support.

Contribution

It introduces a novel LLM-based virtual agent capable of realistic, empathetic motivational interviewing, combining prompt engineering with a user-friendly platform.

Findings

Virtual agent matches human counselors in empathy and adaptability

Effective simulation of motivational interviewing techniques

Potential to expand access to substance abuse counseling

Abstract

We introduce a novel application of large language models (LLMs) in developing a virtual counselor capable of conducting motivational interviewing (MI) for alcohol use counseling. Access to effective counseling remains limited, particularly for substance abuse, and virtual agents offer a promising solution by leveraging LLM capabilities to simulate nuanced communication techniques inherent in MI. Our approach combines prompt engineering and integration into a user-friendly virtual platform to facilitate realistic, empathetic interactions. We evaluate the effectiveness of our virtual agent through a series of studies focusing on replicating MI techniques and human counselor dialog. Initial findings suggest that our LLM-powered virtual agent matches human counselors' empathetic and adaptive conversational skills, presenting a significant step forward in virtual health counseling and providing insights into the design and implementation of LLM-based therapeutic interactions.