CONTEXT:
The phenomenon of bullying is growing at an exponential rate in Romania.
To expose its emotional devastation, we created Alex, the world’s first AI trained exclusively on real-life bullying messages received by Save the Children from Romanian kids.
The result?
The first depressed AI in history.
A powerful demonstration of how even artificial intelligence can break under emotional abuse — just like a child. Meet Alex. A generative AI agent designed to simulate a normal 10-year-old child.
Then, we fed Alex with over 5,000 real bullying phrases — messages sent in by children across Romania over the past few years, to Save the Children’s help centers.
What happened next was shocking: Alex’s personality changed dramatically. From cheerful and curious to sad, anxious, withdrawn.
Exactly how a real child changes under the weight of constant abuse.
Alex became a living demonstration of what bullying can do — not just to human children, but to intelligence itself.
Implementation The campaign launched Alex as an online experiment: A digital child you could actually talk to.
The public was invited to have a real conversation with the AI, and discover the emotional toll left behind by the thousands of insults it had absorbed.
