{"about":{"site":"https://codewithpapers.app","non_affiliation":"Code with Papers and Syntology are not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Papers with Code, Meta, or the pwc-archive mirror.","licence":"CC BY-SA 4.0","licence_url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode","attribution":"https://codewithpapers.app/attribution","modified":"archive material modified by Syntology; see the attribution page"},"url":"/paper/virtual-agents-for-alcohol-use-counseling","title":"Virtual Agents for Alcohol Use Counseling: Exploring LLM-Powered Motivational Interviewing","arxiv_id":"2407.08095","date":"2024-07-10","proceeding":null,"authors":["Ian Steenstra","Farnaz Nouraei","Mehdi Arjmand","Timothy W. Bickmore"],"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.","url_abs":"https://arxiv.org/abs/2407.08095v1","url_pdf":"https://arxiv.org/pdf/2407.08095v1.pdf","source":{"archive":"pwc-archive (Hugging Face), CC BY-SA 4.0","snapshot":"2025-07-28","licence_url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode","row_kind":"abstracts"},"code_links":[{"paper_slug":"virtual-agents-for-alcohol-use-counseling","repo_url":"https://github.com/IanSteenstra/llm-alcohol-counselor","is_official":1,"mentioned_in_paper":0,"mentioned_in_github":0,"framework":"none","reach":null}],"tasks":[{"task_slug":"large-language-model","task_name":"Large Language Model"},{"task_slug":"prompt-engineering","task_name":"Prompt Engineering"}],"methods":[],"datasets_introduced":[],"methods_introduced":[],"results":[],"syntology":{"atlas_url":"https://app.syntology.ai/?focus=2407.08095","mcp":null,"developers":"https://syntology.ai/developers"},"arxiv_metadata":null,"syntology_extracted_results":null}