Tripp, the award-winning XR wellness firm, launched Kōkua AI, a psychological wellness information designed to ship real-time, personalised emotional assist throughout a number of platforms.
Named after the Hawaiian phrase for “selfless care,” Kōkua AI leverages years of temper and emotional state knowledge from Tripp’s platform—over 23 million emotional inputs throughout TRIPP’s international wellness classes—to supply individualized, adaptive assist.
Kōkua makes use of AI not simply to talk, however to grasp, replicate, and reply in significant methods, personalised to every consumer’s distinctive wants and way of thinking. It’s out there throughout cell, immersive, and voice-based experiences, mentioned Nanea Reeves, CEO of Tripp, in an interview with GamesBeat.
“We’ve been evolving Kōkua AI over time, and we see it as a big differentiator for Tripp,” Reeves mentioned. “We see ourselves as a layered approach to wellness and we’re there for you on any device.”
Why Kōkua issues now
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The general public launch of Kōkua comes at a pivotal second, Reeves mentioned. A rising physique of analysis has affirmed the ability of digital applied sciences—notably AI-driven chatbots, VR, and AR platforms—to develop entry to psychological well being assist and enhance outcomes:
Digital Actuality (VR) and AI have proven medical advantages in decreasing signs associated to anxiousness, melancholy, PTSD, and phobias. VR immerses customers in secure, therapeutic environments and enhances emotional regulation (Nature, 2024).
AI-powered chatbots are more and more used for temper monitoring, cognitive-behavioral remedy, and suicide prevention assist. Customers admire their 24/7 availability, lack of judgment, and ease of use (JMIR, 2017).
• A current NEJM AI examine (2024) highlighted how autonomous AI psychological well being assistants can ship personalised interventions utilizing pure language processing and voice evaluation, creating participating and efficient consumer experiences.
• 80% of People imagine AI can enhance healthcare high quality and entry, and 25% choose suppliers who combine AI—highlighting the general public’s rising openness to AI in wellness and healthcare contexts (Tebra Well being Notion Research, 2024).
Kōkua AI Characteristic Highlights
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• Voice Avatars with Cloning: With a brand new AI voice library that features over 20 voices, Kōkua has additionally been enabled with Personalised Voice Cloning. Customers can hear their very own voice ship personalised wellness steering and affirmations.
• AI-Powered Reflections: Guided psychological wellness check-ins and interactive teaching powered by TRIPP’s proprietary Kōkua Core engine.
• Picture Era: Actual-time visualizations based mostly on consumer temper and conversational context.
• Immersive Worlds: Breathtaking 3D environments and binaural soundscapes tuned to assist calm and focus.
• Direct Dial Entry (Coming Quickly): Psychological wellness assist by way of cellphone—accessible to all, with or with no headset.
• Gamified Dialogue: A conversational “volley” system encourages sustained, participating interplay.
Optimistic outcomes from Kōkua
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Since its beta launch on cell and digital actuality in 2024, Kōkua has doubled session engagement (+100%); had long run retention with 45%+ of premium month-to-month lively customers utilizing the app for 12+ months; was named Finest Innovation of 2025 by the Aurea Awards and Finest in Spatial Computing on Apple Imaginative and prescient Professional; amassed over 2.6 million in-app 5-star scores, which have been used to coach Kōkua AI; and Tripp is the most-reviewed mindfulness app on Meta Quest units.
Constructed on basis of innovation and belief
Nanea Reeves is CEO of Tripp.
Kōkua AI is powered by Tripp’s patented temper detection and personalization platform, which dynamically adjusts wellness experiences based mostly on temper surveys, respiratory patterns, and real-time dialog move. The platform makes use of a novel atomic voice supply technique for responsiveness, and ensures consumer management with built-in instruments to cancel, alter, or right enter mid-session—important for belief in psychological wellness functions.
“No path to wellness is the same. With Kōkua, we’re creating emotionally intelligent tools that adapt to you—in your voice, on your terms,” mentioned Reeves. “We’re honored that our community has helped shape this powerful platform from the inside out through the sharing of their feelings with us in our apps.”
“Tripp has always anticipated where AI was going,” mentioned Tim Chang, enterprise associate at Mayfield Fund, in a press release. “Kōkua is the culmination of years of intentional, ethical development in the service of mental wellness.”
Availability
Kōkua is now out there by way of the Tripp cell app (iOS & Android), Meta Quest, Apple Imaginative and prescient Professional, HTC Circulation, PlayStation VR, Pico and is increasing to Android XR and extra platforms together with smartglasses and AR.
Evolving options
Tripp’s cell app
Kōkua AI has some hidden options that Tripp places on the market for customers to bump into and use earlier than Tripp amplifies them. The corporate has expanded its voice library for Kōkua AI so it has 21 completely different voices that you may change the AI’s voice to, together with ASMR. There are three ASMR whisper voices which have been a prime request from customers for a very long time.
Reeves unhappy that there’s some analysis that exhibits there are neural results once you hear your individual voice for self emotional regulation. It prompts the mind’s self-referential areas, Reeves mentioned.
“It makes positive messages feel more personal and believable and impactful, even though most of us have a initial reaction to hearing our own voice,” Reeves mentioned.
So Tripp created the flexibility to clone your voice within the app and apply it to the AI. It’s stay on the Meta Quest platform first. Then it can make its approach to cell. The cell app may even get real-time imaging.
Kōkua AI provides confidence boosters throughout your day
Kōkua AI makes use of AI to boost your properly being.
If you work together with Kōkua AI, you’ll be able to ask it for a confidence booster earlier than an essential assembly. Kokoa AI answered with a motivational voice-based reasurance that described a futuristic cityscape that was meant to remind Reeves of limitless prospects. The AI seeks out the LLM with the perfect response.
“We have this whole platform that’s tuned around generating AI output, specifically to mental and emotional well being,” Reeves mentioned. “That’s the main differential differentiator of what we’re doing.”
Tripp may generate meditation workout routines for the customers. It added guardrails for the AI because the variety of AI brokers has exploded.
Kōkua AI responded to Reeves when she mentioned she was nervous about our interview. The voice of the AI mentioned, “It’s natural to feel a bit nervous before an interview, but remember that you’ve got this. Take a moment to breathe deeply and remind yourself of your strengths and the unique perspectives you bring. How about visualizing a positive outcome that can sometimes help calm the nerves and boost confidence?”
Reeves additionally requested the AI what it knew about Reeves given its interactions together with her over the weeks. The AI voice of Kōkua AI rattled off plenty of issues it knew about Reeves with reassurances about her robust assist community round her.
“You can talk to me about anything that’s on your mind, Nanea,” the AI voice mentioned. “I’m here to support your emotional well being, whether you want to discuss mindfulness, gratitude, navigating changes or anything else that’s important to you.”
Reeves requested the AI to attach her to a specialised AI agent that might assist with a particular emotional concern and it did so. Reeves mentioned Tripp will launch a brand new agent for the beginning of psychological well being consciousness month in Could. A number of brokers will likely be out there over time and finally it can begin monetization.
“We have not announced it yet, but we are working with a clinical entity to provide the framework for that when we launch,” Reeves mentioned. “There will be a life coaching mode and even a dream analysis mode, because that’s one of our top tasks. We’ll keep adding modes like frameworks for career coaching.”
Privateness safety
She famous that younger male customers are expressing some actually huge emotions that perhaps they’d by no means share with certainly one of their pals or an grownup, or perhaps a therapist, for concern of feeling judged. On the similar time, she famous that Tripp is being moral about its knowledge assortment in order that it preserves consumer privateness. Customers can delete details about themselves at any time.
She famous that knowledge storage is “completely decoupled from any personally identifiable information, and we actually don’t record the conversations. We store summaries of them for our context.” Customers may choose out of recording data a few session if they want.
Extra automation of AI options
Tripp is launching its Kōkua AI meditation app.
The corporate has 25 individuals and it has automated a variety of duties in its producting move utilizing AI. As AI outcomes have gotten higher, the automation has made the corporate extra environment friendly. Now Tripp is producing real-time assist for individuals who name in for assist, and it’ll join these individuals to human assist as wanted.
“It’s been a fascinating journey,” Reeves mentioned. “We’re experimenting with producing 3D real-time movies quickly into the experiences, in addition to 3D objects, and enabling interplay.
“For VR, we’ve achieved a lot. I’m pretty confident that we are the wellness leader in XR, in mental wellness in our category, as the most-rated mindfulness app on the Quest,” Reeves mentioned. “We were named best in spatial computing as one of the apps on Apple vision Pro. We have been announced as an early access partner with Google on the Android XR platform, and we’re excited about these upcoming expansions. But in order for us to have maximum reach and really scale our business, it’s important that we go into new channels like mobile. We see that as a precursor to our ability to be able to support the smart glasses and the AR smart glasses.”
She mentioned Kōkua AI audio is on the market by way of cellphone calls, and Tripp may deploy that function in its cell app. It is possible for you to to hearken to that voice app on the Meta Ray-ban sensible glasses.
“We want to render the experience of how you are feeling in real time. So our focus for next year will be to start integrating even more bio signals, but one of the first ones we’re going to do is the voice sentiment. It’s not what you say. It’s about measuring the quality and the valence identified in your voice. Is it stress? Are you expressing joy? Happiness?”
Extra benchmarks and future plans
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So far as benchmarks go, Reeves mentioned Kōkua AI has been educated on 23 million emotions shared with Tripp that it used as the inspiration for constructing Tripp’s context engine. And the corporate has had had shut to three million downloads on VR.
“Our goal right now is to start scaling into mobile and increasing our addressable audience,” Reeves mentioned.
The app is extremely rated, however Reeves desires to get mainstream adoption in th elong run.
“We do have a large active duty population of young men using our app, and also veterans, but I definitely think that being able to reach more people with our emotions with our supportive AI agent is important,” Reeves mentioned. “I think the AR smart glasses will be a tipping point for us. We will be very well positioned for that transition with the way that we’ve architected our platform and and how we can support you with just audio only and and do it in a very unique, focused way.”
Tripp can combine its teaching into its audio experiences and visible experiences, that are like soothing music visualizers. Reeves mentioned that individuals are importing private photos into the VR app and different elements of the functions. She mentioned that individuals who personalize Tripp can have 400% extra engagement, and 61% can have lively classes for six months or longer. Reeves mentioned the velocity of the AI is getting higher as properly so customers don’t have to attend so lengthy for responses.
“It’s a real retention driver,” she mentioned. “We will start launching new agents and one of the first will be a mental health coach. It’s not for replacing professional human support or medical services. But it could be very helpful for that person late at night who is feeling that they need to talk to someone friendly. That’s really our goal. We were very cautious initially when we launched the first version. We were testing it. We want to be thoughtful about how we approach interactions with AI.”
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