Emobot, which looks like a speaker or a minimalist sculpture, does "continuous emotional monitoring" thanks to a camera and microphones, explains the young technological director of this French company.

It is used to detect possible psychiatric disorders in the elderly, such as depression or anxiety.

Antony Perzo and the three other co-founders of Emobot hope to provide an answer to the risks associated with loneliness and medical desertification.

Their device, already tested in nursing homes and in private homes, should make it possible to adjust treatments and therapies without waiting for the next visit from the psychiatrist.

The algorithms are capable of "analyzing facial microexpressions" which reflect human emotions, themselves a mirror of our "psychological and psychiatric state", details the engineer.

In the field of health, AI, capable of collecting and analyzing large volumes of data in real time, has long been used to perform many diagnoses, from cancers to urinalysis.

"As humans, we simply can't process all the information we generate. We need help," said Steve Koenig, vice president for research at the Consumer Technology Association (CTA), who organizes the CES.

Body, Mind, AI

The expression "artificial intelligence" is questioned by many scientists, who see it above all as a marketing tool for companies.

At CES, from toothbrushes to tractors, there are few gadgets and services that don't have AI.

Nufa, for example, defines itself as a "pioneer in AI body transformation": this mobile application offers users to retouch their photo to visualize themselves with a slim and athletic body, and motivate themselves to follow a 90-day plan. to achieve this result "in real life".

The president of the Ile-de-France region, Valérie Pécresse (LR), visits the stand of the start-up Emobot on January 5, 2023 at the CES show in Las Vegas © Julie Jammot / AFP

But AI "isn't just a buzzword for winning your CES bingo," notes independent analyst Avi Greengart.

This technology "is used in smartphone cameras. In factories to identify defective products. In agriculture to identify weeds and spray them with weedkiller. The AI ​​is here, and there it is."

Emil Jimenez founded MindBank Ai in a "quest for immortality", "so that (his) daughter could always ask her daddy a question".

Her app allows her to record her answers to personal questions (for example: "What does love mean to you?") in order to "save your mind forever in the cloud".

But beyond this ambition, the service won over its audience on the promise of getting to know yourself better... during your lifetime.

The app features a psycho-linguistic model that analyzes users' words to decode their emotions.

sentimental crowd

AI can also be used to understand crowd emotions.

The Ask Polly tool, from the Canadian company Advanced Symbolics, performs market research in minutes.

The user asks him a question -- for example, "Is it a good time to buy an apartment?"

or "Should juvenile criminals go to jail?"

-- and the program scans social networks (Twitter, TikTok, Reddit and Instagram) to analyze public opinion, finely and on a large scale.

In 2022, automated creation algorithms caused a stir, in particular those of the Californian company OpenAI with GPT-3 for text generation, and DALL-E for image generation.

The French start-up Imki has designed a sound and light show for the Roman Theater of Orange where the interactive graphics have been made thanks to programs of this kind.

Artificial intelligence is present in all product categories at CES, the technology and electronics show in Las Vegas, here on January 3 © Robyn BECK / AFP

"This makes it possible to create content quickly with very low production costs. The artistic director has a very wide choice of images in a very short time", underlines Marie Lathoud, marketing director of Imki.

She sees in AI a tool at the service of artists.

Saket Dandotia, chief operating officer of Magnifi, acknowledges that generative AI represents a "threat for designers, whom it will replace", like robots in factories.

His team created Strobe, an automated video creation software.

"For us, AI is a huge opportunity, which will transform the entire creative industry," he said.

© 2023 AFP