Beyond Chatbots: Athlete AI as an Emotional Support Agent for Adolescents

In this study, we explored incorporating athlete personality traits into AI-based emotional support agents. We developed an athlete AI through a personality training process. A user study was conducted with four adolescents to compare athlete AI with traditional AI interactions. Our findings revealed that athlete AI successfully demonstrated distinctive personality traits and increased user willingness to share personal concerns, transforming from an information tool to a personality-driven support agent. While this approach showed promise, balancing personality expression with natural conversation emerged as a key challenge. This late-breaking work offers insights into designing specialized AI personalities for adolescent emotional support.