Amazon’s Alexa, a virtual assistant, will be able to detect a person’s emotions and feelings based on the quality of their voice. This will help Alexa respond to a speaker’s request in a more targeted manner, such as recommending products based on how the speaker is feeling.
Profiling has always been a tool for marketers to ensure their advertisements reach a more likely-to-convert customer. In the past, the categories of profiling were more static and generic such as age, gender, location. However, technology has developed over the years to be able to sense real-time changes in moods and mental states. Businesses are investing more in such technology to predict what individuals need, to be able to sell them products relevant at that point in time.
Read the full article on The Atlantic: Alexa Wants to Know How You’re Feeling Today
Analysis:
As these technologies get smarter at understanding what we are feeling and thinking based on proxies like our facial expressions or voice, it may feel disconcerting and intrusive. There are three categories of application where emotional AI is currently used (Read more at Harvard Business Review here):
- Systems that use emotional analysis to adjust responses;
- Systems that provide targeted emotional analysis for learning purposes;
- Systems that replicates and ultimately replace human-to-human interactions
Emotion-based advertisements fall in the third system as they are influencing emotional behavior of buying, and it simulates a salesperson convincing a consumer by making an emotional connection.
These various systems have the potential to create positive social impact by imitating social connections to reduce loneliness, having a 24/7 “guardian” to take care of one’s emotional health, or reducing human errors like car accidents due to road rage. However, the creators and businesses using them would need to be cognizant of the implications and structure rules to maintain trust, privacy, and emotional boundaries.
Questions for personal analysis:
- What are the ethical concerns of having machines learn to analyse human emotions?
- What do you think about advertisements getting more personal and targeted?
Useful vocabulary:
- ‘emergent’: in the process of coming into being or becoming prominent.
- ‘augment’: make (something) greater by adding to it; increase.
- ‘ante’: an amount of money that each person must risk in order to be part of a game, or the price of something
Picture credits: https://unsplash.com/photos/tXz6g8JYYoI