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Funds for Software That Recognises Emotion in Voices
Tel Aviv, Israel-based start-up Beyond Verbal claims to have software which can gauge human emotions by listening to the tone of a voice, regardless of language. The company has recently raised $2.8m in a round of seed funding.
The funding, its first round, is led by the newly-launched Genesis Angels, whose co-founder Kenges Rakishev joins the Board.
Beyond Verbal's CEO Yuval Mor says the firm's software, which will be offered as an API-style cloud-based licensed service, uses ten-to-fifteen second clips of speech, analyses voice modulation, and seeks specific patterns in the way people talk. This is used to understand emotions like anger, anxiety, happiness or satisfaction, and pick up nuances in mood, attitude, and decision-making characteristics, says Mor. 'To understand these three things is to understand emotions.'
At present, the firm claims 80 percent accuracy in detecting emotions - a figure it hopes to improve by integrating the package with other technologies such as word and context recognition. In a demonstration video showing President Obama in a 2012 presidential debate, the software detects 'practicality', 'anger', 'cynicism' and 'extrovert egocentricity'. (www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=CZ4NtEXLW8Q#! ).
Mor, who says the product is currently being tested in call centers, acknowledges that some languages will present greater challenges - and the system needs to be set up specifically to detect pitch and tonality in certain Asian languages, including Chinese.
Web site: www.beyondverbal.com .
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