Generative AI strategy, user experience, and consulting. San Francisco, California

Emotional AI

Emotions are added to the voice or speech mode of conversational AI to make them sound more human. This makes AI easier to relate to. But whilst it makes AI more believable, it raises risks as well.

A communication-centric view of conversational AI would claim that AI should talk and behave as much like a human as possible. Providing AI with emotional expressiveness makes AI more natural, but with the increase in realism and naturalism comes a greater risk of failure in communication. The more users believe the AI, the more they will be disappointed when it turns out that they AI hasn't understood them.

Part of the issue facing emotive AI is that the emotional "content" is not a reflection of the AI's understanding of a user's human intentions and communication. Emotions are not a reflection of the state of the conversation. Nor are they used to facilitate communication — the role they serve in human face to face interaction.

Rather, emotions are added to the AI's expression without being communicatively additive. That is, they are don't provide additional meaning. They simpl make the AI sound more natural.