Durex Si is the first artificial intelligence sex expert, providing young people from 16-24 with one, discreet and trustworthy source of information around sex and relationships.

SI is a Facebook Messenger chatbot that can answer thousands of questions across topics such as contraception, STIs, pregnancy, LGBTQ, relationships, sex exploration and sex education.

In order to answer these it uses a mix of copy and image based answers powered by Durex in-house specialists and approved by independent sex experts Bish. When required, SI also links out to specific pages from official medical institutions (such as the UK’s National Health Service).

Functionalities like “hot topics” and “related topics” enable Durex SI to feed users’ curiosity for long period of time even without a specific questions to ask.

SI can also promote Durex products, but will only do so if and when truly relevant to the conversation it is having with a user.

Development began in late 2015, with the investigation of the various AI platforms that could deliver the concept. After prototyping and validating the options, the preferred solution was a Facebook Messenger chat interface built and powered by msg.ai, a preferred Facebook partner.

Through 2016, Si was developed in stages and constantly tested and validated with the target audience - firstly gaining qualitative feedback and later gaining quantitative learnings. This included specific testing around Red Flag topics (e.g. sexual assault) and Adverse Events (product complaints) to ensure it was managing risk appropriately.

At each stage, Si was retrained to improve its responses and new content added around topics it had been previously unable to answer. New Facebook Messenger functionality was also added to make the most of the chosen platform.

Throughout this process, the content was reviewed by sex, relationship, medical and legal experts.

Si will be launched in 2 countries - the UK on 12/05/17 and Russia on 05/06/2017.

However during the Beta launch research testing showed 7 out of 10 youngsters exposed to the concept are interested in using SI. In Beta, SI's accuracy was already over 75% and over 40% of Beta users declared to want to use SI again.

Si currently has a completion task of 84% - The task completion score measures how accurately Si is able to answer a given task. A task is a specific sex or relationship question, and doesn’t account for trolling or conversational questions.