{"paper":{"title":"A clinically validated framework for auditing AI chatbot behavior in mental health interactions","license":"http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/","headline":"","cross_cats":["cs.HC"],"primary_cat":"q-bio.NC","authors_text":"Christopher Summerfield, Kevin YC Hou, Lennart Luettgau, Matthew M Nour, Raymond Dolan, Veith Weilnhammer","submitted_at":"2026-02-01T17:32:04Z","abstract_excerpt":"Millions of users turn to consumer AI chatbots to discuss emotional, behavioral, and mental-health concerns, creating an urgent need for rigorous and scalable safety evaluations. Here we introduce SIM-VAIL, a clinically validated framework for auditing chatbot behavior in mental-health contexts. SIM-VAIL simulates users with specific psychiatric vulnerabilities and conversational intents, engages them in multi-turn conversations with frontier AI chatbots (including Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, Grok and Llama models), and scores each exchange across 13 clinically grounded risk dimensions. Across 81"},"claims":{"count":0,"items":[],"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"source":{"id":"2602.01347","kind":"arxiv","version":3},"verdict":{"id":null,"model_set":{},"created_at":null,"strongest_claim":"","one_line_summary":"","pipeline_version":null,"weakest_assumption":"","pith_extraction_headline":""},"integrity":{"clean":true,"summary":{"advisory":0,"critical":0,"by_detector":{},"informational":0},"endpoint":"/pith/2602.01347/integrity.json","findings":[],"available":true,"detectors_run":[],"snapshot_sha256":"c28c3603d3b5d939e8dc4c7e95fa8dfce3d595e45f758748cecf8e644a296938"},"references":{"count":0,"sample":[],"resolved_work":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57","internal_anchors":0},"formal_canon":{"evidence_count":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"author_claims":{"count":0,"strong_count":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"builder_version":"pith-number-builder-2026-05-17-v1"}