Peer-reviewed Authoritative

Support-Seeking After Market Withdrawal of a Purpose-Built AI Well-Being Tool (Ash): Cross-Sectional Survey

Peer-reviewed version of a cross-sectional survey of UK adults who had used the Ash AI well-being app within 90 days before its withdrawal from the UK market in January 2026, asking where they turned for emotional and mental-health support afterwards. Of 7,415 randomly sampled eligible users invited by email, 393 responded. General-purpose AI tools and no support at all were the most common primary sources after the withdrawal; few respondents moved to NHS services or private therapy.

Read at medinform.jmir.org Archived copy

Publisher

JMIR Medical Informatics (JMIR Publications); Slingshot AI; Northwestern University

Published

13 Oct 2026

Added

1 week ago

DOI

10.2196/96515(opens in a new tab)

Key Findings

Primary support source after the withdrawal: general-purpose AI tools 27.1% (104/384) and no support at all 26.0% (100/384), against NHS services 4.9% (19/384) and a private therapist 8.1% (31/384)
Among 157 respondents using general-purpose AI for mental-health support, the main motivations were instant access (78.3%) and cost (73.9%) rather than perceived helpfulness (18.5%)
60.2% (219/364) reported worse access to support, rising to 80.7% (71/88) among those who had not sought support since
In free-text answers (n=272), 33.8% reported finding no suitable alternative, 22.8% judged general-purpose AI inferior and 15.8% expressed emotional distress at the loss

Methodology Notes

Survey of former users of the authors' own product, distributed by Slingshot AI through Tally between February and March 2026 (month precision only; stored dates use day 01); response rate 5.3% (393/7,415), 364 completed all items; self-report, cross-sectional, single-item well-being measure; qualitative coding AI-assisted with three rounds of human review and no formal intercoder reliability. Funded by Slingshot AI and NIMH grants; the first author was a Slingshot AI employee and the authors state the company has a financial and reputational interest in the findings. Published 2026-10-13 (Crossref). The primary JMIR page is walled to direct fetches; the full text was read through a reader proxy and the abstract on the Crossref record. Peer-reviewed version of PsyArXiv et8ma (2026-03-30).

Sources

JMIR Medical Informatics article(opens in a new tab) (primary)

DOI(opens in a new tab) (13 Oct 2026)

PubMed record(opens in a new tab)

Preprint version (PsyArXiv)(opens in a new tab) (30 Mar 2026)

Archived snapshot (Wayback Machine)(opens in a new tab) — preserved against link rot

Topics

Digital mental health Dependency & parasocial attachment Human-AI relationships Vulnerable users Regulation analysis high stakes guidance

Authors

Caitlin A Stamatis, Kaylee P Kruzan, Josh Hsu, Mark A Ungless, Thomas D Hull

Cite This

APA

Caitlin A Stamatis et al. (2026). Support-Seeking After Market Withdrawal of a Purpose-Built AI Well-Being Tool (Ash): Cross-Sectional Survey. JMIR Medical Informatics (JMIR Publications); Slingshot AI; Northwestern University. https://medinform.jmir.org/2026/1/e96515

Related Insights

Preprint

Generic AI or Nothing: Support-Seeking Patterns After Market Withdrawal of a Purpose-Built AI Wellbeing Tool

PsyArXiv (OSF); Slingshot AI research team and collaborators · 30 Mar 2026

Peer-reviewed

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