“Is this even real?” was our first reaction when we tried out EVI. Hume AI took everyone by surprise with the release of EVI last week. Named after Scottish philosopher David Hume, the company gave the world its first emotionally intelligent voice AI. 

Empathic Voice Interface, or EVI, can engage in conversations just like humans, understanding and expressing emotions based on the user’s tone of voice. It can interpret nuanced vocal modulations and generate empathetic responses, leading to many likening it to the next ‘ChatGPT moment’. 

While ChatGPT is currently limited to generating text responses without much understanding of sentiment, EVI steps in to fill this gap.

“ChatGPT is text only. We think the future of AI is a voice app, the voice is four times faster than text. The problem is that when we’re speaking we expect the AI to understand not just what we’re saying but how we’re saying it,” said Alan Cowen, Hume AI chief in a recent podcast.  

However, OpenAI caught up soon. A day later, it unveiled Voice Engine, a model which can generate natural-sounding speech from text input and a mere 15-second audio sample. Notably, Voice Engine can create emotive and realistic voices using this brief audio input, which is similar to what EVI does. 

While OpenAI’s Voice Engine is not publicly available yet, the EVI demo impressed everyone, leaving them eager for more, leading to the website reaching full capacity. 

“Just tested Hume’s empathic voice, and it’s quite surprised, sad, embarrassed, perplexed, excited! It analyses my voice for many emotional categories and also generates multiple emotions and voices. It switches often as well!” wrote a user on X after trying EVI. Another user posted, “I shared the problems I am facing, and it felt like I am talking to a real person.” 

How EVI Works 

EVI is powered by an empathic large language model (eLLM), which understands and emulates tones of voice, word emphasis, and more to optimise human AI interaction.

It can understand human emotions such as amusement, anger, awkwardness, boredom, calmness, confusion, pain, and more. Interestingly, it can even catch lies. The company claims that it can detect 53 human emotions. 

Hume observes that humans express a lot without words. Whether gasping in fear, sighing from tiredness, grunting with effort, or laughing in joy – these sounds, called ‘vocal bursts’, convey a range of emotions.

The company has gathered thousands of audio clips from people worldwide to determine the emotional meanings of vocal bursts, collecting data from over 16,000 individuals across the United States, China, India, South Africa, and Venezuela.

Hume isn’t stopping at voice alone. It plans to train its LLM to recognise various facial expressions worldwide, enabling the model to understand user emotions based on facial cues.

“What we’ve done at Hume is build models that understand expressions a lot better and we’ve integrated those into large language models. These models understand beyond language. What’s going on in the voice, what’s going on in facial expression… and it can learn from that,” said Cowen. 

EVI in Action 

EVI can serve as a perfect digital AI assistant that can uplift you on a bad day or provide calming support in stressful situations. It could be Samantha from the movie ‘Her’. The benefits of EVI extend far beyond personal use. It can be used in customer service to analyse a customer’s voice during calls or chats. 

“There’s a lot of AI going into customer support right now. Some of our early design partners for this new API are people who want to take the automated customer support to make it a lot better,” said Cowen.   

Lately, a lot of research has centred around creating humanoids. OpenAI recently partnered with Figure AI to build generative AI-powered humanoids. 

In a recent video released by Figure, humanoid robot Figure 01 was seen holding a natural conversation perfectly with a human while passing him an apple. EVI can make conversations with humanoids more human-like. 

Also, it’s a perfect tool for sentiment analysis for market forecasting and brand sentiment research. It can also be integrated into mental health apps, offering supportive and encouraging responses based on a user’s voice patterns, helping in clinical diagnosis. 

EVI can personalise learning experiences for students, identifying moments of confusion or discouragement and offering additional support and explanation.

The Ugly Side of EVI

While Hume’s EVI is impressive with its emotional intelligence, some users might find its constant chatter a bit too much. It’s like the stranger at the bus stop who just wouldn’t shut up. 

And just like with every technology, EVI too has the potential for misuse. Using its persuasive capabilities, it can manipulate individuals – for instance it can be used to market unethical products like drugs to teenagers. During election times, EVI could be misused to influence voter behaviour through targeted messaging and emotional manipulation.

Though EVI could give a big boost to the concept of AI partners, human-AI relationships may be viewed as unhealthy. “If you’re dealing with an AI girlfriend and spending more time with it than with humans, that’s going to be a negative for you,” said Cowen.

To keep its misuse in check, Hume supports ‘The Hume Initiative’, a nonprofit that works with experts to set ethical guidelines for using empathetic AI. The website lists unsupported use cases such as manipulation, deception, unbounded empathetic AI, and optimising for reduced well-being, which includes psychological warfare.