AI tools offer support for people with autism in decoding social interactions

Autistic Translator claims to help some people make sense of their social mishaps. Photo / 123RF

Theron Pierce has never held a job long enough to get promoted and struggles to connect with people at work. Ten months into a gig teaching cello lessons at an after-school programme in Canada, Pierce felt like they were thriving in the job.

Then a layoff notice came.

Embarrassed and hurt, 34-year-old Pierce, who has autism, said they struggled to understand why they’d been let go. So they turned to the Autistic Translator, an AI tool where you type in a situation you’re trying to understand, and it gives the unspoken nuances of social situations.

After describing their situation, the translator generated a response: in bullet points, the AI told Pierce how their persistent questions and search for feedback were interpreted by their supervisors as incompetence.

“It was kind of eye-opening for me,” Pierce said. Reading feedback from an AI devoid of any human expression or emotion made the information easier to process, Pierce said.

More than 2% of adults, or over 5 million people, have been diagnosed with autism in the United States, according to the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, and medical and research experts say they typically struggle to grasp unspoken rules and guidelines, resulting in confusing or awkward social interactions.

AI tools such as the Autistic Translator or Goblin Tools claim to help people like Pierce better understand social situations. Some autism researchers have found reasons to be optimistic about AI’s value, saying it can be a great companion to other therapeutic tools. But many experts and users agree that these AI tools, helpful as they are, still need a lot of work.

Autistic Translator and similar tools are especially helpful for people with autism because those people generally think in terms of rules, said Elizabeth Laugeson, clinical professor and director of University of California, Los Angeles’ programme for the education and enrichment of relational skills, who works with autistic individuals to develop social skills and maintain relationships. The tools can help users confirm their comprehension of an interaction or event.

But Laugeson remains cautious about AI’s use beyond general yes or no prompts. That’s because AI doesn’t understand the social nuances, context or conversational patterns needed to provide accurate and helpful responses.

“If we have an overreliance on an AI to navigate the social situation, then we might also be discouraging things like self-advocacy or personalised support … which we know are really critical for their growth and for independence,” Laugeson said.

An example of a question and response from Autistic Translator. Photo / Dean Sewell, Washington Post

Autistic Translator was built using advice from therapists, and the bot generates answers based on published scientific research and responses in online forums about autism. Its founder Michael Daniel, who is autistic and has attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), said its instant responses make the AI chatbot helpful and popular among users.

“I found it really took the emotional sting out of the situation and helped process through those things much faster than I normally would’ve,” Daniel said in an interview.

The 34-year-old created Autistic Translator from his home in Newcastle, Australia, after losing his job in August. Daniel, who also has a daughter with autism and a son with ADHD, said living in a home with different neurotypes made communicating hard. If he could use AI to communicate at work, he could use it to do the same at home, he thought. Daniel released the AI tool to the public via a Reddit post, garnering thousands of positive interactions overnight.

Using his background as a data analyst, Daniel built the translator using OpenAI’s ChatGPT models. Today, he said it has more than 3000 downloads, and it costs US$4 to $12 ($7 to $20) a month depending on the tier. Since then, Daniel has made the service into an app called NeuroTranslator and expanded its translation capabilities to users with ADHD.

There are other tools that claim to help neurodiverse people. Bram De Buyser created Goblin Tools, a website that offers eight different AI chatbot tools geared for all neurotypes. Users can ask questions or put down their scrambled thoughts into different AI tools to mitigate tasks such as creating to-do lists, mapping out tasks, and weighing pros and cons. While Goblin Tools doesn’t translate social situations, tools such as “The Formalizer” help users convey their thoughts in the way they want them to come across to avoid miscommunication.

AI tools are particularly popular among people on the autism spectrum because, unlike humans, AI never gets tired of answering questions, De Buyser said in an interview. “They don’t tire, they don’t get frustrated, and they don’t judge the user for asking anything that a neurotypical might consider weird or out of place,” he said.

Lawrence Fung, an associate professor of psychiatry and behavioural sciences at Stanford University, said the Autistic Translator can be a great tool to improve communication and articulate what is going on in their social settings.

“I think that they can definitely learn from it,” Fung said.

However, autistic people don’t always get the whole picture and because the AI is reliant on the user’s understanding of the situation, it can result in inaccurate outputs, Fung said.

For 22-year-old Eva Dale, understanding the entire picture of certain social situations can be a challenge. The bakery worker from Connecticut often finds that people say one thing when they mean another. Deciphering what people mean isn’t intuitive for Dale, who has autism and relies on direct translations from her mum.

During one instance, Dale’s grandmother mentioned multiple times that her dog needed to go out, meaning it needed to be walked, but Dale interpreted it literally to take the dog outside. Later, Dale’s mum explained that her grandmother was actually asking her to walk the dog.

“A lot of times, people say something like the dog has to go out, and it means a secret message like, ‘Will you take the dog out?’ They won’t tell you the secret message and expect you to know it,” Dale said.

Sceptical, Dale entered the interaction into the Autistic Translator. To her surprise, she got the same response her mum had given her.

“I feel like the program understands at least somewhat the autistic brain in general. It’s actually very impressive that it can understand such a wide range of people,” she said.

Understanding tone, social cues and other nonverbal language can be a challenge for people with autism. Photo / 123RF

However, not all users get direct answers. After coming across the Autistic Translator on Reddit, Phillip Lee, a 28-year-old from California, tested out the AI tool on multiple occasions but ultimately decided that he’d prefer to get feedback from the people around him.

Understanding tone, social cues and other non-verbal language has always been a challenge for Lee, who has autism and ADHD. He was reprimanded last year by his graduate programme committee for delivering jokes at inappropriate times. He also heard from his peers and colleagues that his blunt tone and lack of eye contact came off as dismissive. Frustrated, Lee sought to better understand his cognitive difference.

Asking the translator how people perceive his mannerisms helped Lee clarify some things, like when he asked the AI: “Why do people get mad when I don’t smile?”

The translator responded: “Neurotypicals often rely on smiles as a non-verbal cue for friendliness, while this might not be a natural expression for autistics.”

This made sense to Lee. As he entered more specific scenarios from his personal life such as “why do I get so angry?” the responses grew more vague and general, sometimes not even getting a response at all because of the complicated nature of the questions.

Daniel said that users are given a disclaimer about the translator’s capabilities, and that people don’t have to agree with everything the AI tool says. The Autistic Translator is programmed to acknowledge and redirect any questions about complex topics like violence, drugs and medical advice and divert back to communication.

Wary of the AI’s ability to factor in the context and dynamics of his life, Lee prefers to hear feedback directly from his colleagues and family now.

“It’s informational but not holistic enough to suffice as a solution for everything,” Lee said of the AI tool. “There is no road map nor a flowchart because the autistic experience is an individualised experience that requires so much time and patience.”

As for Pierce, the translator recently helped them navigate a tricky relationship question. Reading the feedback reassured Pierce they were reading the situation correctly and gave them confidence to start a conversation with their friend.

“That rarely happens to me – feeling prepared for a conversation,” Pierce said. “The response from the AI made me feel validated and relieved.”