Utah girl tests ChatGPT, Claude & Gemini on 84 teen cases; finds empathy lacking
Ellianna Gu, an eighth-grader, tested AI chatbots including ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini for emotional support. She designed 84 scenarios involving common teenage issues such as academic stress and loneliness. The chatbots provided organized responses but often lacked empathy, which is crucial for emotional challenges. The effectiveness of their replies varied based on the prompt's language style…
Eighth-grader Ellianna Gu from Salt Lake City, Utah, conducted an experiment to assess the emotional responses of AI chatbots to 84 teenage case scenarios. She put OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Anthropic’s Claude, and Google Gemini through their paces. The teen chose to test the chatbots after learning some kids turn to them for emotional support.
Her study, "Bot-tling up Emotions: How AI Chatbots Interpret and Respond to Emotionally Challenging Scenarios," earned her a finalist spot in the 2026 Thermo Fisher Scientific Junior Innovators Challenge.
Gu quizzed the chatbots on subjects ranging from academic pressure to friendship troubles, family strife, loneliness, anger, and sadness. The teen tailored her prompts, alternating between slang and formal language, before submitting the scenarios to the chatbots. She rated the chatbots' replies based on four factors: empathy, clarity, problem-solving, and helpfulness. Empathy was measured on a scale of 1 to 4.
While the chatbots offered clear and structured answers, Gu found their responses often fell short in showing empathy. The systems also adjusted their replies depending on the phrasing of the prompts. A slang-filled scenario might yield a different response than the same dilemma described in formal language.
Among the three services, only Claude scored a perfect 3 for effectiveness. Although the chatbots generally provided well-organized and understandable answers, their effectiveness in addressing emotional concerns was lacking. Gu, who plays the piano and clarinet and aspires to become a neurologist, expressed her hope to help people, particularly those with debilitating conditions like Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and Huntington's disease.
Written by urgent.news from Times of India's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
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