Sony Interactive Entertainment has seemingly won a patent that may allow future PlayStation consoles and hardware to figure out what the player’s emotional state is by analyzing their voice. “Systems and methods for emotion detection and emotion-based moderation based on voice inputs are provided,” begins an abstract for a new filing titled “Emotion Detection & Moderation Based on Voice Inputs” that was published on March 30, 2023, and while there’s some talk of memory profiles being involved, at least one portion of the filing teases potential gaming applications, such as players wanting to control what kind of emotions they want to experience during a game. One possibility could be a game that automatically lowers its difficulty when it detects the player being frustrated and angry.
From a USPTO patent filing:
Systems and methods for emotion detection and emotion- based moderation based on voice inputs are provided. A user emotion profile may be stored in memory for a user. The user emotion profile may include one or more moderation rules that specifies a moderation action responsive to one or more emotional states. A current communication session associ- ated with the user and one or more other users may be monitored based on the user emotion profile. An emotional state detected as being associated with a subset of the messages may trigger at least one of the moderation rules by corresponding to at least one of the emotional states speci- fied by the user emotion profile. A presentation of at least one of the messages in the subset being provided to the user device may be modified in accordance with the moderation action specified by the user emotion profile.
A user may wish to control the type of emotions that they encounter within an interactive (e.g., gameplay) session and within associated communication session(s). For example, a user may be stressed when other users are yelling or otherwise exhibiting anger. In such cases or in similar cases, the user’s mental health or sensory processing con- ditions may deteriorate or otherwise suffer when exposed to others’ negative emotions over extended periods of time. Another example may include players who may not wish to expose themselves to profanity, graphic content, bullying language, misgendering language, or other aggressive, hos- tile, or violent language (e.g., harassment, threats). In par- ticular, young players (e.g., children) may have parents, guardians, or other supervisors (e.g., relatives, child-care professionals) who wish to limit their charge’s exposure to such negative emotions and associated language.