You’re doing your best to stay present on the call, but your brain is pulling you away — the overdue project, the groceries you forgot, the weird thing your coworker said in Slack. You’re nodding, smiling, half-listening… and that’s when you miss it.

The shift in her voice. The too-long pause. The almost-tears behind her eyes. A subtle but clear cue that says “I’m not okay” — and just like that, the moment slips past.

Because you’re human.

But what if your phone wasn’t just paying attention to signal strength — what if it noticed emotional signals too?

Introducing: FaceTime Connection Cue

This redesign reimagines FaceTime’s technical warnings as emotional ones. When someone you’re talking to shows signs of distress, your phone picks up on the cues — and gently nudges you to check in.

FaceTime Connection Cue also offers guidance on what to say, coaching you through a moment that might otherwise be filled with awkward silence or uncertainty.

The Behavioral Science Behind It

Connection Cue is rooted in how humans process emotion, attention, and social dynamics — and where we often fall short. When we’re distracted, under pressure, or simply unsure what to say, we tend to overlook emotional cues. This redesign brings those signals to the surface at just the right moment.

But noticing is only part of the challenge. Even when we recognize that something’s wrong, many of us hesitate — uncertain how to begin, or afraid of making it worse. That’s where Connection Cue draws on an unexpected ally: generative AI.

Recent research by Wenger, Cameron, and Inzlicht (2025) shows that while people report preferring empathy from humans, they often feel more understood by messages generated by AI. This is known as the AI empathy choice paradox — a gap between our stated preferences and our actual emotional experience.

On FaceTime, the empathy still comes from you, the human. But Connection Cue equips you with AI-generated suggestions that can help you respond more skillfully. Rather than replacing human connection, this redesign uses AI to scaffold it — helping us be the kind of friend we mean to be, but don’t always know how to be in the moment.

A Nuanced Take

FaceTime Connection Cue surfaces a tough truth: we’re not always as emotionally attuned as we’d like to be. But that’s not a failure — it’s just a fact of being human in a world full of distractions and competing demands.

Instead of asking us to be perfect empathizers all the time, this redesign meets us where we are. It makes emotional signals easier to notice. It gives us words when we don’t have them. And it gently reminds us that even in a FaceTime call, connection isn’t guaranteed — it’s built moment by moment.

Tech has given us constant communication. Maybe it’s time it helped us communicate better.