Chatbot for Online Support Groups to Treat Tobacco Addiction

Investigators will conduct a pilot RCT to test the efficacy of an intelligent chatbot to aid small, private, quit-smoking peer support groups. Participants will be randomized to an intervention arm (chatbot-enhanced support group), or a control arm (support group only). In the intervention arm (N=60), each support group will be connected to an intelligent chatbot running on a secure local server as a trained LLM (large language model). The intelligent chatbot will function as an additional member of the GroupMe support group, but a member that only responds if no human does so. In the control arm (N=60), the support groups will be connected to an automated message-posting bot running on a secure local server. This automated message-posting bot will lack the response capabilities of the intelligent chatbot. But both the intelligent chatbot and the automated message-posting bot will post a pre-written daily discussion topic to encourage participants to discuss issues known to facilitate tobacco cessation or group bonding.