In the context of enterprise applications, there are interesting developments that show how computers can be trained to understand what we say, how we say it, and return something of value from this information. Emotion recognition is already being used in industries like entertainment and healthcare. AFFECTIVA, a company that came out of MIT Media Lab, has developed a platform that can identify emotional states from facial expressions. Their technology is being used to support traditional market research activities like surveys and focus groups.

This year, AFFECTIVA is once again using their AFFDEX demo to let the public test their response to the Super Bowl Ads. If you want to have some fun testing your emotional response to this year’s ads while checking out their demo on line, you can try it out here. To learn more about the research done on affective computing at MIT Media Lab, check out their research projects here.