An AI interface that can read your feelings..

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AI apps like ChatGPT can follow your instructions. But what if they could also understand your feelings and the meaning behind your words?

AI startup Hume AI unveiled a new voice interface yesterday that the company claims is “the first conversational AI with emotional intelligence.“

Hume’s website claims that it’s building empathic AI to “serve human well-being” through an API that can interpret emotional expressions and generate empathic responses. In case you’re not familiar with APIs, think of it as a pipe that helps one piece of software talk to another.

And that’s what makes it remarkable. Hume’s conversational AI interface isn’t a standalone app, it’s a technology that can power many other applications. A few applications we may see in the near future:

• An AI assistant with humanlike voice
• A customer support agent that sounds like a human being
• A therapist that understands your thoughts and feelings

How to access and test Hume’s conversational AI interface

• Go to Hume’s demo website
• Press start conversation and enable mic access
• Say anything you like and start a conversation
• Watch the AI talk back and display your tone and emotional state in the bar on the right of the screen
• Be careful not to share any personal or sensitive information

Flicking through the website, it isnt just voice AI that Hume are working on, they also have Expression AI (click here) which can analyse your facial features to instantly capture nuance in expressions in audio, video, and images. Laughter tinged with awkwardness, sighs of relief, nostalgic glances, and more, built on 10+ years of research. It is able to predict mood, depression, attention and much more. AI really is getting exciting and as Moses Oh , Senior Research Engineer stated “I get to solve problems no one imagined five years ago . . . I get to experience technologies no one will be able to live without in five years.”

My thoughts

I won't lie, I sat writing this, whilst my wife sat across the room, and two of my children were doing their homework. I was amazed at Hume, although unsure why! AI is amazing and incredible and working in social care, I can see how this could really help prevent some of the loneliness within our society.

I called over my wife and children and we spent ages playing around, getting it to tell us facts, jokes and having a conversation. I even re-started and pretended I was an older person living alone and depressed and the AI did a really good job to keep me upbeat and engaged. I will admit, I am sold!

Don't take my word for it.. head over to https://demo.hume.ai/ and test it yourself!