So a big theme at this year’s South by has been artificial intelligence, or how to use AI to make better products and services. One of the speakers at this year’s event, Sophie Kleber an Executive Director of Product and Innovation at from the New York digital marketing firm Huge--brought up a really good point. It’s not enough that AI provide just answers or a service, it must also know how to interact with the user with a certain amount of empathy, or even emotional intelligence. She pointed out a human unconsciously forms a relationship with who, or what, he or she is conversing with.

We spoke with Kleber live from SXSW 2017 to understand how AI-driven conversational services such as Amazon’s Alexa, can be customized to pick up cues of the user’s emotional state, in order to better understand and serve that customer.