Soon, Alexa can read and respond to emotions in your voice

Virtual assistants are getting scarier, we mean, fancier, with rumoured features like facial recognition and integrated Google services. And as the arms race ramps up, Amazon is banking on Alexa, the voice service that powers Echo, which will be able to tell when you’re mad and apologise quickly enough for not knowing which album you want her to play.

A source familiar with Alexa, tells MIT Technology Review that researchers are now working on natural-language-processing updates that will help it detect emotion in someone’s voice, as well as remember and connect known information about a user to her requests.

The software itself isn’t new — just think about all the times an automated telephone system has said, “I’m sorry, I don’t quite understand” after you lost your temper and started yelling. Amazon is simply hoping to incorporate a better and more sensitive version of this into Alexa.

All this is definitely part of Amazon’s attempt to improve Alexa as competitors are (supposedly) about to hit the market, like Google’s rumoured Echocompetitor with impressive voice recognition and search capabilities. But at least Alexa might be the first to say “sorry” when you get mad at how dumb it is.