Research published in March 2025 reveals that GPT‑4 can perform emotion-appraisal tasks as well as or even slightly better than human raters, assessing emotional complexity in text with high reliability. It also excels at recognizing emotions in facial images and multimodal content, rivaling average human understanding
🎓 Key Study Insights
- Appraisal-based judgment
GPT‑4 achieved 99.7% accuracy in mapping emotional appraisals—matching human-level performance in identifying emotional valence and categories - Structured emotion tests
In testing via the “Reading the Mind in the Eyes” task, GPT‑4 matched human norms. It also scored impressively on the Mayer–Salovey–Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test (MSCEIT), scoring above 120 in key scales - Multimodal emotion detection
GPT‑4V (vision-enabled version) accurately interpreted emotions across images, audio, and text—handling sentiment, facial emotions, micro-expressions, and multimodal cues at near-human levels
✅ Comparison to Human Performance
| Task | GPT‑4 Performance | Human Average |
|---|---|---|
| Emotion Appraisal Accuracy | ~99.7% | Comparable |
| RMET (Eyes Test) & MSCEIT Emotional Scores | Above 120 on key scales | 100–110 range |
| Multimodal Emotion Recognition | Strong on most but weaker for micro-expressions | Human-level on general cues |
While eye and facial expressions like fear may still challenge GPT‑4V, overall performance aligns with average human understanding .
🌐 Why It Matters
- AI with emotional intelligence: GPT‑4’s ability for emotion detection could transform areas like virtual therapy, learning, customer engagement, and mental health tools.
- Ethical concerns: Misreading emotions or leaning on biased data could lead to manipulation, misdiagnosis, or unfounded privacy intrusions theguardian.com.
- Regulatory urgency: Experts urge safeguards on emotion AI, including transparency, disclaimers, and limits on emotional profiling.
🔮 Looking Ahead
- Broader integration: Expect emotion-aware LLMs in virtual assistants, healthcare bots, and education platforms.
- Data integrity: Ensuring culturally diverse training data and preventing false assumptions will be critical.
- Ethical governance: Regulation may follow EU’s lead by curbing emotion AI in sensitive sectors like employment, law enforcement, and clinical use.
✅ Bottom Line
In 2025, GPT‑4 and its multimodal versions have achieved human-level emotion detection across tasks using text, facial cues, and audio. This leap expands AI’s empathy capabilities—but heightens the need for ethical guardrails to prevent misuse.
