Huawei joined the virtual assistants business as far back as 2013 when it launched its virtual assistant in China. It is similar in functions to Siri, Cortana, Alexa and Google Assistant. Huawei’ virtual assistant is presently being used daily by 110 million people and thus, the tech giant is looking to enhance it with software which enables the use of emotional AI. 
Huawei has hinted that it is working on software that will use AI to help its own virtual personal assistant interact with users on an emotional level. The virtual assistants presently available relays information and handle tasks in a robotic manner without any emotions as the response remains the same regardless of the current emotional state of the user. But that may not be the case in the near future as Huawei has disclosed that it is working on software that will use AI to help its own virtual personal assistant interact with users on an emotional level. This was made known by Felix Zhang, vice president of software engineering at Huawei’s Consumer Business group.
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A recent report by research firm Gartner earlier this year had revealed that emotion AI will be able to use analysis to detect people’s moods and respond with more personalized answers. Gartner’s research vice president Annette Zimmerman had hinted that by 2022, our personal device will know more about our emotional state than our own family. The personal assistants will have the ability to read facial expressions, analyze the user’s voice and behaviour. Virtual assistants will be able to understand the context of the commands they receive and respond with an answer that is more in line with the emotions of the user. These virtual assistants with the ability to read emotions will find applications in automobiles and health-care. Cars outfitted with such a digital helper would be able to decide whether a driver is tired, stressed, angry or frustrated, and control the car in a manner that would make the ride safer. In health-care, a virtual assistant with emotion AI could monitor a person’s mental health 24/7 and alert caregivers if a problem is detected.
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