On March 1, 2024, Tech Xplore reported on the development of EmoAda, a multimodal affective interaction system, by Professor Sun Xiao's team from the School of Computer and Information Science. Tech Xplore is a news department under the Science X Network, which primarily covers cutting-edge developments in engineering, electronics, and technology. Science X is a high-quality news media platform that provides daily science, research, and technology news. With a broad readership of up to 5 million globally monthly, it includes scientists, researchers, engineers, and more.

After the COVID-19 pandemic, the global prevalence of psychological disorders such as depression and anxiety has significantly increased. Psychological research indicates that timely social support can effectively alleviate the impact of daily stress on mental health. In recent years, with the development of multimodal affective computing and significant language model technologies, providing more timely, user-friendly, and privacy-conscious AI mental health assistants for patients has become a hot topic in scientific research and industrial applications.

Professor Sun Xiao's team from the Anhui Provincial Key Laboratory of Affective Computing and Advanced Intelligent Machines at Hefei University of Technology has long been committed to research in natural language processing, multimodal affective computing, and multimodal human-computer interaction. The team has released a multimodal emotion interaction large language model (MEILLM) and developed a multimodal emotion interaction and psychological adaptation system called EmoAda. This system features multimodal emotion perception, personalized emotion support dialogue, and multimodal emotion interaction capabilities, helping users alleviate psychological stress and enhance psychological adaptation.

Through research and user testing, EmoAda provides users with a safe, unbiased conversational environment, facilitating more natural and humane psychological support. The system's anonymity attribute offers users a more liberated and comfortable means of communication, enabling them to discuss topics that may be difficult to broach in face-to-face interactions. Additionally, AI systems like EmoAda provide support around the clock, regardless of time constraints, which is a significant advantage for users who require assistance at any moment. This work is important in promoting improvements in mental health support services, particularly for users who cannot access traditional psychological therapy, and it also contributes to the integration and development of artificial intelligence and psychology.

News Link: https://techxplore.com/news/2024-03-ai-emotional-chat.html

Paper Link: Tengteng Dong et al., EmoAda: A Multimodal Emotion Interaction and Psychological Adaptation System, MultiMedia Modeling (2024). DOI: 10.1007/978-3-031-53302-0_25