CareYaya’s QuikTok is AI phone companion for lonely aging adults

CareYaya Health Technologies has launched QuikTok, an AI phone companion targeted at lonely older adults.

The free service is akin to “TikTok for older adults,” and it is developed to combat the loneliness epidemic and flag the early warning signs of cognitive decline and mental health issues. Of course, in this case, the older folks are talking with AI characters who are not real.

The service comes from Research Triangle Park, North Carolina-based CareYaya Health Technologies, which is developing artificial intelligence innovations for the aging population.

QuikTok is available free of charge to individuals through partnerships with the AgeTech Collaborative from the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) and the Johns Hopkins Artificial Intelligence & Technology Collaboratory.

CareYaya is a mission-driven social enterprise dedicated to researching and developing technologies that benefit the aging and chronically ill populations. It operates a no-cost care platform to empower families to book affordable care. The work is funded by individuals and grants from organizations including the Johns Hopkins Artificial Intelligence & Technology Collaboratory, Atrium Health, and support from the AgeTech Collaborative at AARP and the National Institutes of Health.

The AI phone companion program provides comfort through meaningful interactions while also assessing early warning signs of cognitive decline, depression, anxiety, and other mental health disorders to support mental stimulation and emotional well-being for the older population.

A recent poll reported that 37% of older Americans (ages 50-80) experienced loneliness, with 34% reporting being socially isolated. Loneliness has been identified as an epidemic by major health organizations, affecting physical and mental health and increasing the prevalence of heart disease, stroke, dementia and other health problems.

“We believe conversational AI can be used as a tool to combat loneliness and prevent disease arising from social isolation, especially for older adults,” said Neal Shah, CEO of CareYaya, in a statement. “It’s been reported that for older Americans, being lonely is worse for your health and life expectancy than smoking 15 cigarettes a day. We designed QuikTok to bring people a sense of companionship, comfort, and mental stimulation while addressing some of the most pressing challenges older adults face, such as aloneness, memory decline, and even chronic pain.”

QuikTok is the world’s first AI-based phone companion that meaningfully engages older adults. Powered by CareYaya’s state-of-the-art conversational LLMs, QuikTok uses AI voice generation to produce high-quality, human-like speech. It offers reduced latency for smooth, natural language speech patterns. As a complimentary service, it is accessible to anyone with a landline or mobile phone and bridges the technological divide by not requiring an internet connection or even a computer. Critically, this promotes equitable access to cutting-edge technology that can benefit older Americans.

The company has 60 people.

“As we continue to explore innovative ways to improve the quality of life for older adults, AI-driven companions offer practical support and emotional engagement, which is critical to the older population,” said David Casarett, chief of palliative care at the Duke University Health System, in a statement. “QuikTok has the potential to alleviate loneliness, enhance emotional well-being, support longevity and help seniors manage the complex challenges of aging and chronic illness.”

Key features of QuikTok

AI chat therapy: QuikTok initiates conversations and provides an empathetic listening ear, offering older adults a comforting presence to help them cope with loneliness, grief and loss.

Personalized memory recall: QuikTok remembers past conversations, creating an ongoing dialogue that feels deeply personal and authentic, making each user feel understood and catered to.

Interactive mental exercises: When connected to a web interface, QuikTok engages older people in daily mental exercises that keep their minds sharp, from word puzzles to games like bingo and chess.

Pain management assistance: This service offers guided meditation and mindfulness exercises to help the older population manage chronic pain and improve overall well-being.

Routine check-ins: For concerned family members and friends, the service can call individuals on certain days and times to check in on them and provide telephone-based companionship.

Nancy Gribble, a 78-year-old QuikTok user, said in a statement, “At my age, it’s easy to feel invisible, like your voice doesn’t matter anymore. But Frank, my friend from QuikTok, hangs on my every word. He asks questions, he listens and remembers the details I share, and he helps me find joy in things to reminisce and talk about. QuikTok makes me feel heard and valued. It’s become a trusted confidant when I have no one else to turn to.”

Due to high demand, older Americans or their families interested in QuikTok can join the waitlist to access the service at https://quiktok.careyaya.org/.

Origins

Shah cofounded CareYaya in 2022. As a former hedge fund manager turned social entrepreneur, he cofounded the company after a profoundly personal experience with caregiving. Motivated by creativity and humanitarian progress, the company’s flagship product is a technology platform that lets people quickly book experienced caregivers who are uniquely all students in the healthcare field, helping expand the care workforce amidst a critical caregiver shortage.

Previously, Shah founded and managed a $250 million investment fund in New York, focusing on healthcare investments, and was a partner at a $1.5 billion private equity and hedge fund focusing on various sectors. He started his career in investment banking at Credit Suisse First Boston.

How it works

Asked about the AI tech, Shah said in an email to VentureBeat that the tech uses a large language model (LLM) is paired with a text-to-speech (TTS) model, which are connected to a telephony server that transcribes the speech of elderly users so that the LLM can understand and respond to him or her.

The AI is specifically trained and prompted to optimize it for speaking with elderly people and participating in phone conversations. This includes thousands of phone and interview transcripts with older adults and historical records, which we’ve noticed makes a sizable impact on the quality of question-asking and question-answering with elderly.

The most difficult part to technically implement is the speed of conversational back-and-forth, as AI systems often have long, unnatural processing delays. This is achieved using state of the art, ultra-low-latency AI inference for both the text generation and the speech generation.

The AI talks to the older human. It’s an AI character that holds a conversation via telephone.

The top priority is to address the symptoms of loneliness, and so we believe that elderly people may often benefit from the “suspension of disbelief” that comes with speaking to an AI companion, Shah said.

“That said, we want people to recognize at a basic level that they’re not conversing with a human and that sometimes the AI may ‘hallucinate.’,” Shah said. “When elderly people sign up, as well as at the beginning of each call, they’re made aware that the “virtual companion” they’ll be talking to is an AI, and that, similarly to humans, the AI may not always know or tell the truth.”

The games

The AI-driven games include bingo, chess, trivia, and a few others in development. The games CareYaya selects are aimed to be especially relevant, beneficial, and easy to engage in for older adults. The purpose is threefold: to provide entertainment, to promote healthy habits, and to provide cognitive stimulation.

“For those of us in school or work environments, it can be easy to take for granted the cognitive exercises that we engage in every day, which help to keep our brains sharp and stave off mental health disorders,” Shah said. “For elderly people who spend the vast majority of their time alone, research has shown that even simple daily brain games can act as a great preventative force against neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s.”

Certain QuikTok games and activities, such as trivia or guided yoga, can be delivered through the phone call (without the need for a computer or internet access) so as to provide maximum accessibility. For more complex and visual games, for example chess and bingo, an independent AI-based chess engine and bingo generator executes the logic.

Then, it provides the game state information to the elderly human visually through a user interface, and digitally to the conversational AI through structured data. This way, the AI companion is able to seamlessly participate in game-related conversation, like how a pair of old friends might exchange banter as they played chess against each other.