How does emotional intelligence impact AI chatbots?

Emotional intelligence is the pinnacle of human evolution. Even though a lot of animals show emotional intelligence to some extent. The level and complexity of emotions which humans show are far more than what is found in animals.

Combining this with Artificial intelligence will help this chatbot to have the potential to become our AI best friend. Even though all this sounds like something that is going to happen in the future, but its closer than it seems.

So the time when the chatbots were programmed to do a specific task is gone now. These modern-age AI chatbots can do almost everything along with the power of emotions and feelings.

In this blog, we will talk about how emotional intelligence will impact the performance of an AI chatbot.

What is emotional intelligence?

Emotional intelligence is the ability to perceive, express, regulate and understand emotions. Emotions are the key to communicating and conveying our emotions to another person.

Emotional intelligence consists of several elements :

What is emotional intelligence in an AI chatbot?

Emotional intelligence in AI chatbots is how it analyses, expresses, gauges and responds to the user's emotions and thoughts. In simple words, we can say that the ability to be able to give an apt response to a user’s message.

How does emotional intelligence affect chatbots?

How do we know that a chatbot has emotional intelligence? What are the things that a chatbot should have to be called emotionally intelligent?

We have made a list of things that can help you recognize these

Emotional intelligence in an AI chatbot refers to the ability of the chatbot to recognize, understand, and appropriately respond to human emotions during conversations.

It involves the combination of emotional awareness and sensitivity into the chatbot's functionality, and making it engage with users in a more human-like and sentimental manner. Here are the key components of emotional intelligence in AI chatbots:

• Ability to recognise emotions

The first functionality that chatbots must have is the ability to identify and understand the emotions expressed by users through text, voice, video and any other means.

It should be able to recognize basic and simple expressions like joy, sadness, frustration, or confusion in the user’s response. Before we respond to a user’s input it is important to make sure that our AI chatbot can point out and separate different emotions.

• Emotion Understanding

The second thing that a chatbot should be able to assess and gauge is the ability to be able to understand emotions. It is fairly difficult to do so in a chatbot as in some circumstances it gets difficult for even humans to understand emotion with 100% accuracy.

The chatbot's comprehension of the underlying reasons and context behind user emotions allows for a more nuanced understanding of the user's state of mind. Understanding that a user's frustration may be caused from a particular problem or it could be a lack of information.

• Response modification

Response modification is the ability of the chatbot to modify its responses based on the emotions which are understood from the chat to make sure that conversations are easy going and empathetic.

These chatbots must have the ability to modify responses according to the user’s input and make the responses sound more comforting, motivating or supportive in situations where the user expresses sadness, distress or any other type of negative emotions.

It is not just about responding appropriately to negative emotions but positive and happy emotions need an apt reply as well. It is a blend of both of the things that provide a perfect response for the user.

• Empathetic Responses

When we are feeling low. One thing that works best is to talk to someone who will understand our situation and make us feel better. This is the same with chatbot as well. No one wants to talk to a chatbot that will respond with a logical, cold and calculated answer.

For example: if you tell a chatbot that you feel low, the chatbot will answer along the lines of practicality. We don’t want that. Instead, we want a bot that will show empathy. With replies like "I understand it must be frustrating" or "I'm here for you" or “It must be difficult” or “It’s ok to be sad sometimes” to express that it understands and shows empathy.

In short, the responses should validate the emotions of the user and make them feel better.

• Mood Adjustment

This functionality is also an important feature that affects how the conversation between the user and the bot continues.

This chatbot can adjust its responses based on the user's mood and continue to create an easy-going

conversational tone which is in sync with the emotional and mental state of the user.

It can be achieved by adjusting language and tone to be more upbeat or soothing in response to positive or negative user emotions.

• Learning from User conversation

The reason why these chatbots are better than other chatbots that we had previously is because these chatbots can learn from their mistakes and can improve on their own.

This is possible through NLP (Natural Language Processor), which is a subset of machine learning which is the reason why these chatbots are so smart and quick to adapt to their mistakes.

The chatbot's capability to learn and improve its emotional intelligence over time through continuous interactions with users improves its understanding and responses. Learning from past conversations to better assess, gauge and respond to specific user emotions.

By integrating emotional intelligence into AI chatbots. Companies aim to create more natural, engaging, and supportive interaction conversations, making the user experience richer and fostering a sense of connection between users and their AI companion.

Conclusion

We have reached the end of the blog where we talked about how emotional intelligence impacts the performance of AI chatbots. Before we discussed the topic, we learned about the basics like what emotional intelligence is in general and what we expect when we talk about emotional intelligence in AI chatbots.

Then we discussed the highlight of this blog which is how Emotional Intelligence affects the functioning of AI chatbots. We have listed a few like emotional recognition, emotional understanding, adaptation to the context of the user’s input, empathetic responses along mood adjustment.

All these things had a positive effect on the chatbot’s performance with its human counterpart.