Consumer AI and Mental Wellbeing Commission

Globally, only about a third of people living with depression or psychosis receive any formal care.

Hundreds of millions of people experience mental distress without meeting a clinical threshold to receive care. In response to this gap, a fast-growing market of direct-to-consumer mental health and well-being products powered by artificial intelligence (AI) has emerged, with tools ranging from symptom screeners and mood trackers to conversational agents used daily by people who will never see a clinician.

The evidence on what these tools do, for whom, and at what risk has not kept pace. The Consumer AI and Mental Wellbeing Commission was convened to address this evidence gap.

The Consumer AI and Mental Wellbeing Commission brings together leading voices across academia, clinical practice, regulatory science, and lived experience to produce a rigorous, authoritative, and globally relevant synthesis of the evidence, policy landscape, and priority challenges in this field.

It comprises approximately 20 commissioners and is led by three co-chairs: Prof. Bilal A. Mateen, Chief AI Officer at PATH and member of the United Nations’ Independent International Scientific Panel on AI; Dr. Chelsea Clinton, Vice Chair of the Clinton Foundation and Co-Chair of the Coalition for Mental Health Investment; and Prof. Sandra Bucci, Professor of Clinical Psychology at the University of Manchester.

PATH serves as the commission’s secretariat and works in partnership with the other founding organizations, the Clinton Global Initiative, The University of Manchester, and Nature Health. Industry representatives will contribute technical and real-world usage insights through a separate advisory board but will not have access to the commission’s conclusions before publication, to ensure recommendations are free of conflicts of interest.

The commission’s findings will be published in 2027 as a peer-reviewed open access report, with an accompanying plain-language policy brief, and be presented at major global mental health, digital health, and health policy forums.

The commission’s work is organized around five workstreams:

1. The global landscape of products and their associated evidence: how AI is currently used in consumer mental health settings, including the off-label use of general-purpose tools, and where evidence of effectiveness is strong or absent.
2. Gaps and opportunities for AI in global mental health: where AI could help extend mental health support, and where it may introduce new risks.
3. The state of AI safety science for protecting psychological well-being: how safety is defined, monitored, and evaluated; whether existing frameworks are fit for adaptive AI systems; and what a regulatory science roadmap should address.
4. The commercial, platform, and regulatory forces that shape whether safe consumer mental well-being AI can scale: why prior market-based solutions have failed and what sustainable, accessible provision would require, including in low-resource settings.
5. Lived experience: the perspectives of people who have used AI to support their own mental well-being, woven through the other four workstreams.

To have a comprehensive overview of existing evidence, the commission is inviting submissions from the public. Papers, reports, datasets, evaluations, regulatory documents, and accounts of lived experience relevant to any of the five workstreams are welcome.

Submissions may be made anonymously. Those who provide a name can choose whether to be acknowledged in the final report. All submissions will be reviewed by the secretariat and, where relevant, shared with the appropriate experts.

Read the full announcement published in Nature Health here.

Submit evidence to the commission here.

The deadline for submissions is January 31, 2027.

Questions about the commission or the call for evidence can be directed to the secretariat at ai.commission@path.org.