Artificial intelligence: they create a tool capable of detecting people’s emotions when reading digital texts

A computational tool, designed by researchers from several European institutions, makes it possible to detect and “extract” the emotions that a person feels when reading digital texts using a sophisticated system based on artificial intelligence.

It has nothing to do with “spying”, the researchers have observed to EFE, who have assured that the extraction of emotions is an important step towards a “complete” artificial intelligence and able to think as a human being wouldand its utilities range from the rapid discovery of hate messages or the analysis of propaganda to the detection of important problems such as depression.

The tool, named “DepecheMood++”, has been designed by researchers from the Polytechnic University of Madrid (UPM), the Bruno Kessler Foundation in Italy, the University of Twente (The Netherlands) and the French company Recital, and uses natural language processing models and artificial intelligence to make precise measurements of the emotions that are expressed when reading a text, offering a complete report that can be analyzed later.

The Intelligent Systems Group of the UPM has collaborated in this project that allows emotions to be detected automatically on the Internet and is also involved in the European initiative “Participation” that also uses artificial intelligence to study how extremist content is distributed on the internet and how they affect society.

What does the tool consist of?

The researcher Óscar Araque has explained that it is “a lexicon”, an annotated vocabulary that expresses the emotion associated with each word, and has detailed that it is a very widespread resource in the field of Natural Language Processing to provide a necessary subjectivity, but which the computer lacks.

“We teach the system how we humans express emotions,” Óscar Araque told EFE, detailing that for this his team uses learning algorithms -which are in all connected devices and analyze all the information generated by a user on the internet – and neural networks.

But he has insisted that this is a resource that is being used for research only and that they have even rejected proposals from companies to obtain an economic benefit.

“Nothing is used to spy”, although it can be used to find out the emotions expressed by users, for example, on social networks, the UPM researcher has confirmed, and has warned of the risk that biases (of race or gender ) in all artificial intelligence systems and in the consequences they can have on people’s daily lives.

Automatically analyzing the emotions that users express, without the need for a person specifically doing this task, is especially relevant, according to Areque, citing as an example a company that is highly active on social media and wants to know what what your customers think without having to resort to a summary to analyze the thousands of comments you can receive every day; that would do this tool.

“DepecheMode+++” is capable of detecting up to six different emotions (fear, fun, happiness, sadness, annoyance and anger) with a resource that has so far been developed in two languages ​​(English and Italian).