Voicemail software recognises callers' emotions

[Dover]

...and threatens to replace insensitive spouses around the world..(makes you wonder who/what was the model for this program)


Voicemail software recognises callers' emotions

11 January 2005

A voicemail system that labels messages according to the caller's tone of voice could soon be helping people identify which messages are the most urgent. The software, called Emotive Alert, is designed by Zeynep Inanoglu and Ron Caneel of the Media Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, US.

It might be installed at the phone exchange or in an intelligent answering machine, where it will listen to incoming messages and send the recipient a text message along with an emoticon indicating whether the message is urgent, happy, excited or formal.

It works by extracting the distribution of volume, pitch and speech rate - the ratio of words to pauses - in the first 10 seconds of each message, and then comparing them with eight stored "acoustical fingerprints" that roughly represent eight emotional states: urgent or not urgent; formal or informal; happy or sad; excited or calm...
cont'd

http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn6845