At the intersection of emotional intelligence (EI) and artificial intelligence (AI) is emotional AI or systems for studying and emulating human emotions. Here, we describe the fundamentals of pioneering EI and examine how AI has used pattern recognition and natural language processing to develop its understanding of emotion. We cover healthcare, customer support, education marketing, and workplace settings, to present the possibilities and consequences of such AI technologies. Privacy, data bias, and ethical issues are also analyzed. We conclude with some philosophical questions concerning whether AI systems can truly possess human-like EI and deliberate on the developmental direction of responsible emotional AI use. This multi-disciplinary investigation is important for sociologists, computer scientists, and ethicists as a preemptive guide to developing and applying collaborative measures to increase the positive effects and reduce the harm of emotional AI for different purposes.