Briana Vecchione

Briana Vecchione is a technical researcher at Data & Society. She explores what happens when people turn to AI for socioemotional use — particularly with respect to mental health, therapeutic support, and the spectrum of AI companionship. Her work develops user-centered methods and frameworks to inform the responsible design, evaluation, and regulation of socioemotional AI. She also serves as an institutional partner for Brown University’s AI Research Institute on Interaction for AI Assistants (ARIA), leading participatory and empirical research to inform the landscape of AI care and support. More broadly, Briana’s work centers on algorithmic auditing and institutional accountability, which includes foundational work on dataset transparency, the history and social justice dimensions of audit methodologies, and empirical studies of audit tooling gaps and regulatory compliance. She holds a PhD in information science from Cornell University, and her work has received support from the NSF, MacArthur Foundation, Mozilla Foundation, Google, Meta, and Microsoft.