HeHealth, creators of the “Calmara” AI STI detection app, have shut down its dick-scanning services following an investigation by the FTC, as well as their own titular app powered by the same AI.Â
Calmara, marketed as a sort of pre-hook up screening app, promised to be able to detect up to 10 STIs (sexually transmitted infections) purely by looking at photos of users’ dicks. Ignoreing for a moment the questions of privacy and consent in an AI STI detection app, the main study used by the company cited up to four, and the study authors were paid by HeHealth. As for the HeHealth app itself, it presented itself more professionally as a intermediary step before connecting with a healthcare provider.
RELATED: SafeHome.Org’s LGBTQ+ Safety Report Ranks US States
However, what usefulness is an app like that when most STIs are asymptomatic?
Amazingly, HeHealth itself still appears to be in business. CEO Yudara Kularathne’s LinkedIn boasts this chilling quote:
“While I may not wear a cape as a superhero, but as an Emergency Physician and now founder of HeHealth, I’ve often stepped in to provide life-saving interventions when people are at their most vulnerable or weakest.”
It would appear his superpower is more focused on AI than it is healthcare, fact unsurprising in how quickly HeHealth ran from the FTC. In June 2024, perhaps in expectation that HeHealth would get exposed sooner rather than later, he founded another AI company, Aagee AI. Aagee AI’s website boasts that it is “Pioneering AI Tech Transformation in Healthcare and Beyond” Given how HeHealth panned out, Aagee’s services sounds more like a threat than a promise, at this point.
