Young people want to know whether they have perpetrated a sexual assault. A non-profit has created a tool for them. Vibe Check, a free and anonymous alternative to AI, talks teens through consent, boundaries, and apologies.
Peer Educators See AI Limitations
Val Odiembo volunteers at her former high school a few times a month, teaching teens about consent and healthy relationships. Now a sophomore at Rhode Island College, the 19-year-old Odiembo is not much older than the students she teaches, which she believes makes it easier for high schoolers to approach her with their questions. However, she knows she is not the only source they consult. "A lot of them confide in AI," she said. A recent UK study found that one in 10 young adults has consulted AI for sexual health information, and a 2025 Pew Research Center report showed that one in five teens have had a romantic relationship with a chatbot. Odiembo says students sometimes turn to AI for advice about talking to a crush or for reassurance that they did not cross a line in a relationship. As a peer educator trained by a youth-led non-profit focused on ending sexual violence, Odiembo finds this worrying. Artificial intelligence will "just tell you what you want to hear," she said, citing research that AI chatbots often affirm users' actions even when harmful. "I think we are also losing human connection when we confide in AI instead of the people closest to us."
Introducing Vibe Check
When Safe Before Anyone Else (SafeBae), a survivor-founded, youth-led non-profit working to end sexual violence among teens, began developing an online tool for young people questioning whether they may have caused harm in a relationship, Odiembo was thrilled. "I think it is the best thing SafeBae has done since sliced bread," said Odiembo, who also works as the organization's youth programs manager. In mid-March, SafeBae launched Vibe Check, a free and anonymous automated alternative to AI and online forums. It is designed to help young people understand whether they violated a partner's consent, apologize when appropriate, and ensure they do not repeat such behaviors. As of late April, the site has had more than 3,500 unique visitors.
How Vibe Check Works
Vibe Check "is intentionally not AI," said Shael Norris, co-founder and executive director of SafeBae. "It was built by our team based on over a decade of direct work with young people." Users can click through a range of questions to get support working through their feelings, such as "The person I was with is mad and I am worried I did something wrong" and reflecting on what happened in the moment, like "They seemed upset or distant after." Depending on the scenario, Vibe Check offers mini-lessons on the nervous system's freeze response, consent laws around alcohol, and grounding exercises. For example, it states: "If someone became distant, upset, or quiet afterward, that can be a sign they did not feel okay about what happened. You do not need them to 'prove' anything for their feelings to matter. Accountability here can look like listening, apologizing without pressure and respecting whatever boundaries they set."
Addressing Harmful Online Forums
SafeBae's director of strategic initiatives, Drew Davis, was starting college six years ago when he noticed the growing phenomenon of people turning to Reddit forums with "really difficult and vulnerable questions." Initially, he studied forums for people recovering from eating disorders, but as he dug deeper, he found forums for people questioning whether they had perpetrated a sexual assault. "It keeps me up at night how bad these responses" in the forums were, said Davis: "Either you are an awful person, there is no such thing as accidentally causing harm, you definitely did, to the extent that you should kill yourself – or you did absolutely nothing wrong, you are perfect, women suck." In recent years, Davis said, these two approaches have become more entrenched. Following the Epstein files "and our frustration with how really powerful men have not been held to account," he said, communities have wanted to hold younger and less powerful men absolutely accountable. At the same time, "we have the manosphere, where people on these Reddit threads are literally connecting and creating communities on Telegram or on Discord, where it is about hating women and joining together."
Creating an Off-Ramp
As adolescents report record levels of mental health distress, Davis found himself concerned by growing suicidal ideation among girls who had survived sexual assaults and boys increasingly isolated from their peers. He wanted to create a tool that could give people who may have caused harm in their relationships "an off-ramp to rejoin society, be in relation with other people and move towards accountability and repair for genuine mistakes" and "take the onus off of survivors for having to lead these efforts for repair and apology." Initially, he imagined developing a tool as an alternative to Reddit or online quizzes, but as AI technology advanced, he wondered whether it needed to fill that space. "AI chatbots can be sycophantic," telling users what they want to hear, he said. As he began seeking feedback on Vibe Check, SafeBae's youth board of directors appreciated that it offered "gentle, caring, compassionate pushback and redirection."
Research and Reception
Researchers are still working to understand the effectiveness of AI for teaching sex-ed topics like consent. While AI tools show "real promise in making sexual and reproductive health education more accessible, private and user-friendly," they perform better "when communicating about more straightforward topics, such as contraception" than "when discussing more complex or sensitive topics, such as abortion or sexual pleasure," said Scarlett Bergam, a graduating student at the George Washington University school of medicine and health sciences and lead author of a recent review of AI sex-ed tools. When Vibe Check launched, 17-year-old Apollo Knapp clicked through the tool with his high school classmates, trying out made-up scenarios. As a member of SafeBae's youth board of directors and a peer educator working with middle school students, he was impressed that it was "so comprehensive." He hopes he can point preteens to it before they come across any AI chatbots. "If humans are messing up consent this much, I do not even want to see what a robot is going to do with it," he said.
