Hume AI has unveiled EVI, an advanced voice AI with emotional intelligence, available as an iOS app. EVI now features a new AI voice, Kora, and is powered by Anthropic’s Claude 3.5 Sonnet.

The model promises enhanced user interaction by understanding and responding to human emotions.

Developed by top emotion scientists and AI researchers at Hume AI, EVI is the first AI designed to understand and emulate human emotions. 

EVI can understand 53 different human emotions, including amusement, anger, confusion, and even deceit. The AI’s empathic large language model (eLLM) is adept at interpreting tones of voice, word emphasis, and non-verbal cues to optimise interactions.

The new voice, Kora, is also available to developers through the EVI API, which currently supports Anthropic, OpenAI, and open-source language models, with plans to add Google model support soon. Developers can start building their applications and join EVI’s Discord for updates.

The emotional intelligence of EVI stems from Hume AI’s extensive research into ‘vocal bursts’—non-verbal sounds that convey emotions. Hume AI has collected thousands of audio clips from over 16,000 individuals across the United States, China, India, South Africa, and Venezuela to decode the emotional meanings of these sounds.

Looking ahead, Hume AI plans to expand EVI’s capabilities to recognise facial expressions globally, enhancing the model’s understanding of user emotions through 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,” said Hume AI chief Alan Cowen. “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.”

Last month, OpenAI announced its latest model, GPT-4o, which also has voice capabilities that let users ask it to sing, talk faster, use different voices, and speak various languages. This feature will be available to users in the coming months.