Artificial Intelligence Systems Are Catching Feelings

By 2022, IDC predicts, 30 percent of enterprises will use interactive conversational speech technologies to power customer engagement, and affective computing will see a 25 percent jump in real-world applications. "It's not necessarily going to be everywhere," Sutherland says. "But we do expect to see a pickup in terms of moving from experimentation to actual production." As researchers and private companies teach machines to recognize differentiation in vocal inflection, facial expressions and other cues, experts say the field is ripe for applications in business. Companies are already using emotion AI for market research and political polling purposes.