AI, EQ & Communication News — 2026-10-29 (Thu)

Overview

In the past 48 hours, the headlines focused on AI that reads emotion and on the limits of artificial empathy. They also covered the demand for human skills in an AI-driven workplace and a human-plus-AI coaching product. Bioengineer.org and Devdiscourse covered emotion-reading AI and artificial empathy, while HR Executive and Nikkei BP addressed human skills. NTT's high-EQ dialogue technology and Adecco Group's coaching unit EZRA were the main product-side items.

AI that reads emotion

- A report describes AI learning to read hidden emotions and steer safer mental health support (Bioengineer.org). - A separate item covers AI research on online customer experience, which shifts from automation toward emotion, ethics and trust (Bioengineer.org). 【AI empathy and emotional intelligence】 - An article titled "AI Knows What to Say, Not What to Feel: The Growing Problem of Artificial Empathy" discusses the growing problem of artificial empathy (Devdiscourse). The headline suggests that AI produces fitting wording without feeling, and the article's own argument is not available beyond the headline. 【Human EQ and strengths in the AI era】 - An article titled "Why soft skills are no longer enough under AI's reign" argues that soft skills are no longer sufficient under AI (HR Executive). This is the outlet's framing, not an established fact. 【Changes in conversation and social life】 No notable developments.

Words AI writes and speaks

- Nikkei BP's Human Capital Online (page 2) covers a coming era in which everyone becomes an "boss" of AI, and what that means for new norms of psychological safety (Nikkei BP). The headline is Japanese, so this is a description rather than an exact quote.

Speaking practice and coaching

- EZRA, the coaching unit of Adecco Group, announced "Loop," described as the first coaching experience in which humans and AI work together (Okinawa Times). The "first" claim is the company's, as reported in the headline.

Research and studies

- Bioengineer.org's two items above (hidden-emotion reading for mental health support, and online customer experience research) are the research-oriented headlines in this period. No findings or figures are given in the headlines. 【Japan's EQ, communication and AI】 - NTT developed a high-EQ dialogue intelligence technology in which AI understands the user's situation and converses with them (d Menu News). The headline describes the technology as understanding context; whether this amounts to emotional understanding is not shown.

Statements by key figures

No notable developments. 【Integrated analysis: what is happening】 Across the headlines, one structure recurs: emotion is being treated as a capability to build into AI systems, while the human side is being repositioned around it. Emotion-reading AI (Bioengineer.org), NTT's high-EQ dialogue technology (d Menu News) and customer-experience research moving toward emotion and trust (Bioengineer.org) all point to AI that returns responses tuned to a person's emotional state.

At the same time, Devdiscourse's headline raises the gap between producing the right words and having feeling, and HR Executive questions whether soft skills alone are enough. These appear to be two sides of the same shift: as AI produces empathetic-sounding output, the value of human emotional skill may be redefined rather than removed. Nikkei BP's psychological-safety piece and the human-plus-AI coaching product from EZRA both suggest that organizations are designing how people and AI share interpersonal work.

For a reader's judgment, the key point is that the headlines separate what AI outputs (emotionally appropriate language) from what is claimed about inner experience. Claims of "understanding" in product announcements should be read as descriptions of response behavior, which the headlines do not verify.

What to watch

Whether emotion-reading and high-EQ dialogue products, such as NTT's technology, publish evidence of how well they perform. This is inference; the headlines give no results. 2. Whether the debate over artificial empathy shifts from output quality to disclosure and trust, as the customer-experience research on ethics and trust may suggest. 3. How human-plus-AI coaching, such as EZRA's "Loop," is received and whether it changes how human coaching is defined.