IBM’s Watson Can Understand Your Rude Tone

The latest development in IBM's Watson allows it to detect the tone of words you use.

We've all either sent or received emails or texts where the intent was completely misinterpreted. Maybe you didn't mean to sound as demanding or hostile as you seemed to the recipient. Maybe someone said something sarcastically to you and it went over your head.

By far one of the biggest difficulties of communication in our increasingly text-based society is the tone being lost. Sometimes someone's voice in text doesn't even match what you'd expect from them in person. It's weird.

But Watson's taking care of that.

From a press release by IBM:

Can a computer detect the tones conveyed in a message accurately and automatically? Helping humans assess and refine tone in written communication is an interesting challenge in the Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Sciences fields. At IBM Watson, we are beginning to answer this question.

Building on similar linguistic analyses that power IBM Watson Personality Insights, Tone Analyzer analyzes given text and provides insights about the emotional, social and writing tones reflected in that text. Such insights can be used for a number of purposes including personal and business communications, self-branding, market research, public relations management and automated contact center management.

Seriously, check out the tool here and try it out for yourself.