How are you feeling? AI wants to know

How are you feeling today? This is the question that a new generation of artificial intelligence is getting to grips with. Referred to as emotional AI, these technologies use a variety of advanced methods including computer vision, speech recognition and natural language processing to gauge human emotion and respond accordingly. Prof Alan Smeaton, lecturer and researcher in the school of computing, Dublin City University (DCU), and founding director of the Insight Centre for Data Analytics, is working on the application of computer vision to detect a very specific state: inattention. Necessity is the mother of invention and Help Me Watch was developed at DCU during the pandemic in response to student feedback on the challenges of online lectures.