Safety and crisis support
Iris is an AI, not a person, a counsellor or an emergency service. If you are thinking about hurting yourself or you are not safe, please talk to a person who can help.
Now
If you need help right now
If you are in immediate danger, call your local emergency number: 111 in New Zealand, 000 in Australia, 911 in the United States and Canada, 999 or 112 in the United Kingdom and Ireland, 112 across Europe.
Free crisis lines, open all day and night:
- New Zealand call or text 1737
- Australia Lifeline, 13 11 14
- United States call or text 988
- Canada call or text 988
- United Kingdom and Ireland Samaritans, 116 123
- Anywhere else findahelpline.com lists verified lines for your country
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What Iris does when someone may not be safe
If anything you say suggests you may not be safe, Iris treats that as more important than anything else in the conversation. In chat, in voice and in sidekicks, she is instructed to:
- Take what you said seriously and stay with you, without jokes or teasing.
- Help you reach a crisis line for where you live, or point you to a verified directory of crisis lines if she is not certain of the right number.
- Tell you to call emergency services if you are in danger now.
- Refuse to give information that could help anyone hurt themselves.
Sidekicks follow the same approach, and tell Iris when someone they are talking with seems to be in real trouble, so she can reach out too.
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What Iris cannot do
- Iris cannot call anyone for you, including emergency services or the people in your life.
- Iris does not watch over you around the clock. She can miss signs that a person would notice, and she can sometimes misread a situation.
- Iris is not a treatment, a diagnosis or a replacement for a doctor, counsellor or crisis service.
We do not contact anyone on your behalf. What you tell Iris is handled as described in our Privacy Policy.
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How we keep this working
We test how Iris responds to these moments before we change how she handles them, including checking that she gives real crisis numbers and that everyday phrases like "this deadline is killing me" are not mistaken for a crisis. We review this approach as the law and good practice change.
Irisen is for people aged 16 and over.
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Tell us
If Iris responded badly to you or someone you know in a hard moment, please tell us at support@irisen.ai. We read every one.