  Counterspeech, i.e., direct responses against hate speech, has become an
important tool to address the increasing amount of hate online while avoiding
censorship. Although AI has been proposed to help scale up counterspeech
efforts, this raises questions of how exactly AI could assist in this process,
since counterspeech is a deeply empathetic and agentic process for those
involved. In this work, we aim to answer this question, by conducting in-depth
interviews with 10 extensively experienced counterspeakers and a large scale
public survey with 342 everyday social media users. In participant responses,
we identified four main types of barriers and AI needs related to resources,
training, impact, and personal harms. However, our results also revealed
overarching concerns of authenticity, agency, and functionality in using AI
tools for counterspeech. To conclude, we discuss considerations for designing
AI assistants that lower counterspeaking barriers without jeopardizing its
meaning and purpose.
