AI systems dealing with human emotions: how the future will be like with emotional machines

When I was a teenager, I used to enjoy watching a weekly television programme called "Lost in Space". In this science fiction series, a robot having a male identity was used as one of the main characters. He spoke perfect English but his speech sounded monotonic and dull – devoid of inflexions, and variations of volume and tone. This depiction of robots as sounding devoid of human emotions was not uncommon at that time – perhaps film producers felt the need to reinforce the differences between humans and machines. However, in a recent film called Her (released in 2014), the main character, named Theodore, uses an AI operating system that speaks conversational language.