A Minimal Declaration on Emotional Interpretation Rights in the Age of Algorithmic Power

As artificial intelligence (AI) systems increasingly mediate human emotion—detecting our facialexpressions, voice tones, and even influencing our feelings—the question of emotional sovereigntyarises: who ultimately interprets, controls, and validates one’s affective experiences, the individualor the algorithm? This paper introduces a novel interdisciplinary framework to address howalgorithmic emotion inference and affect-sensing technologies risk encroaching on the uniquenessand autonomy of human emotional identity. Drawing on contemporary psychological theories ofconstructed emotion and philosophical perspectives on posthuman identity, we articulate two newethical concerns: affective sovereignty (individuals’ autonomy over their own emotions and theirinterpretation) and uniqueness violation (the failure of AI to respect the individual nuances ofhuman emotional experience). Through an analysis of real-world emotion AI systems—rangingfrom facial expression recognition tools (e.g., Affectiva) to empathetic chatbots (e.g., Replika,Woebot)—we demonstrate how current designs can undermine emotional authenticity and agency.We further argue that existing AI ethics principles (privacy, fairness, transparency) are insufficientto safeguard our “affective self.” As a remedy, we propose a three-part ethical design model foremotion AI: interpretive transparency, design restraint, and identity-responsive feedback. Thismodel reframes emotions as contested ethical terrain rather than mere data points, aiming to ensurethat AI augments rather than erodes human emotional sovereignty. The paper concludes withrecommendations for implementing these principles in technology design and policy, to protectwhat is fundamentally human in the age of emotional machines.