I created the Chatbot ‘Tiya’ to help abused women after a family tragedy

A heartbreaking murder of her own family inspired South African Leonora Tima to create a digital platform where people, mostly women, can discuss and track abuse.

Leonora’s relative was only 19 years old, and nine months pregnant, when she was killed, her body was dumped on the side of a highway near Cape Town in 2020.

“I work in the development sector, so I see violence,” Leonora said. “But what stands out for me is that the violent death of my family is seen as normal in South African society.

“His death was not published in any news outlet because the overwhelming number of cases in our country are such that it does not qualify as news.”

The killer has not been caught and what Leonora sees as the silent acceptance of a woman’s violent death becomes the cause of her app, which has a chatbot called Zuzi.

This is one of the first FREE AI tools developed by African creators to tackle gender-based violence.

“This is an African solution designed by African communities,” Leonora said.

The purpose is to offer support and help gather evidence that can later be used in legal cases against abusers.

The initiative has gained interest among women’s rights activists, although some caution should not be used to replace the survivors, the understanding, and understanding, and emotional connection that can only be provided by a trained professional.

Leonora and her small team visit communities in the towns around her home in Cape Town, talking to residents about their experiences of abuse and ways to fit technology into their lives.

They asked more than 800 people how they use their phones and social media to talk about violence, and what stops them from seeking help.

Leonora knows that people want to talk about their abuse, but “they are worried about traditional routes like the police”.

“Some women will post about it on Facebook and even tag their abuser, which will only serve the slander papers,” she said.

He felt that those systems failed the victims twice, first by failing to control themselves, and then when the victims tried to speak.

With financial and technical support from Mozilla, the Patrick Foundation, and the Patrick McGovern Foundation, Leonora and MOBILE help people to record, respond to people who open people who open people while abusing people while abusing people while abusing people while abusing.

The app is free, although it requires mobile data to download it. Leonora’s team said it has 13,000 users, and had about 10,000 requests for help in September.

At its core, grit is built around three key areas.

On the home screen is a large, round help button. When pressed, it automatically starts recording 20 seconds of audio, capturing what is happening around the user. At the same time, it alerts a private fast Call Call – professional answer companies are common in South Africa – where a trained operator calls the user.

If the caller needs immediate help, the Response Team sends someone to the scene themselves or contacts an organization local to the victim that can help the victim.

The app was built with the needs of survivors of abuse at its core, says Leonora: “We need to gain people’s trust. These are communities that are often ignored. We always ask people when it comes to sharing data.”

When asked if the title of help is missioned, he admits that there are some shocked pressures – the people who try to see if it is abusing the system.

“People are cautious. They’re testing us as much as we’re testing tech,” he said.

The second element of grit is “the vault”, which Leonora says is a secure digital space where users store evidence of abuse, dated and encrypted, for later use by legal authorities.

Photos, screenshots, and voice recordings can all be uploaded and saved privately, protecting important evidence from deletion or tampering.

“Sometimes women post pictures of injuries or save threatening messages, but that can disappear or disappear,” Leonora said. “The vault means the evidence isn’t just sitting on a phone that can be taken or destroyed.”

This month, it will expand again with the launch of its third part – Zuzi, an AI-Powered Chatbot designed to listen, advise, and guide users in the local community.

“We ask people: ‘Should it be a woman? Should it be a man? Should it be a lawyer, a social worker, or a journalist, or another authority figure?’

People told them they wanted Zuzi to be “an auntie figure” – someone warm and trustworthy who didn’t fear judgment.

Although it was built on women who experienced abuse, during the test phase, Zuzi also used men who sought help.

“Some conversations are from perpetrators, men who ask Zuzi to teach them how to help with their anger issues, which they are often directed by their partners,” explained Leonora. “There are also men who are victims of violence and use Zuzi to communicate more clearly about their experience.

“People like talking to Ai because they don’t feel judged by it,” he added. “It’s not a person.”

The UN reports that women in South Africa experience some of the highest levels of gender-based violence (GBV), with five of the highest rates in the world. Between 2015 and 2020, an average of seven women were killed every day, according to South African police.

Many, including Lisa Vetten, a specialist in gender-based violence in South Africa, agree that technology inevitably plays a role in addressing this.

But he also cautioned against using AI in trauma-focused care.

“I call them multiple language models, not artificial intelligence because they engage in linguistic analysis and prediction – nothing more,” he said.

He can see how AI systems can help, but knows of examples where other AI Chatbots have given incorrect advice to women.

“I worry if they give women confident answers to their legal problems,” she said. “Chatbots can provide helpful information but they are not able to deal with complex, multifaceted human problems. People who are impaired need to be helped to trust and feel safe with other people.”

Grit’s approach has gained international attention.

In October, Leonora and her team presented their app at the feminist foreign foreal policy hosted in Paris, where global leaders work to build a more gender-equal world. At the conference, 31 countries signed a pledge to make addressing gender-based violence a key Projecity Priority.

Conversations are buzzing around the use of AI, says Lyric Thompson, the founder and head of the Feminist Foreign Policy Collaborative, “but the moment you try to include gender in the conversation, to raise the dangers of racist, sexist and xenophobic bias being baked in, eyes glaze over and the conversation shifts – likely to a back corridor where there aren’t any pesky women around to raise it”.

Heather Hurlburt – A fellow at Chatham House, who specializes in AI and its use in tech – agrees that gender bias and the claim of gender and bad “, but adds in what way”.

Leonora is clearly the breakthrough of AI to solve gender violence

A 2018 World Forum Forum Report found that only 22% of AI professionals in the world are women, a statistic that is often cited.

“AI as we know it today was built with historical data centered around the voices of people, and white men in particular,” Leonora said.

“The answer is not just about more women workers. We also need creative women of color, more from the global socio-economics.”

At that time, only after Leonora Tima, technology can begin to represent the realities of those who use it.