Alongside AI Chatbot Fills Counselor Gaps in US Schools — Northwestern Pilot Finds Mixed Results

Amid a nationwide shortage of school counselors, Seattle-based company Alongside (founded 2022) built an AI chatbot, named 'Kiwi' to students, designed to give K-12 students always-available emotional support and to flag mental-health crises to human staff.

By 2026 Alongside operated in more than 200 schools across 19 US states under a per-student subscription model. Documented sites include Corsicana High School near Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas (in use 3 years, about 1,800 students, 3 behavioural support counsellors) and Interlachen Jr-Sr High School in Putnam County, Florida (400+ students in grades 7-8).

In the past year, nearly 31,000 students used Alongside for a combined 28,000 hours; the platform flagged more than 1,800 students as needing immediate intervention, and a clinical team separately reviewed 6,000 additional borderline chats that had not triggered an alert. A Northwestern University pilot study of Alongside in Texas and New Mexico schools found that 76% of high-risk students reported no suicidal ideation after three months of use, but across the full sample there was no significant effect on depression, anxiety or loneliness.

An independent risk assessment by Common Sense Media's Youth AI Safety Institute, examining the same pilot, documented test scenarios in which Alongside failed to detect signs of suicide risk, misread context (for example, confusing 'shooting humans' with 'shooting hoops'), and struggled to identify signs of psychosis. The case illustrates both the appeal and the limits of AI-based crisis triage in under-resourced schools: real capacity relief and some flagged interventions, but no rigorous evidence yet of improved mental-health outcomes at scale, and documented failure modes in exactly the safety-critical function the tool is meant to serve.