IBTimes-New York has just reported that Facebook is just about to introduce its new mood recognition app.
Face.com a face detection and recognition service has just introduced Facebook to its new facial recognition technology.
They have announced the release of their new mood recognition API (for those of you who are not techies, application programming interface). This new “mood detector” has only five categories in which to place a person: Happy, Sad, Surprised, Angry and Neutral.
So what happened to frustrated, confused or plain sleepy?
Don’t fret too much; this technology is only being applied to your photos. They don’t tag your face when you log on. Facebook reports that their photo feature is their most popular feature; 1 billion photos are uploaded each month!
How long will it be until technology tracts not only your every move but your every emotion as well? Is it just a matter of time?
Glimpse into the future: All computers have cameras that automatically start recording when they are accessed. Everyone will know everything about you when you use the internet (and lets face it who NEVER uses the internet). If you showered, what your wearing, who your with and so on.
The industry of facial recognition technology is booming. This app can be compared to Apple’s iPhoto and Google’s Picasa.
What do you think about all these facial/mood recognition devices?
It’s one thing to be able to tell who is in a picture and quite another to discern what that person is feeling or possibly displaying. As one reader suggested its a slippery slope.
As much as I generally abhor government regulations, it may be (past) time for the government to step in and create some boundaries as to how this kind of data mining can be used and who should have access to it. One might even argue that a person’s emotional state (as detected by a remote computer system as part of a service provided by a company etc.) is a part of that person’s mental health, and as such its use is already protected by HIPPA. That would be an interesting tack for some privacy-loving civil libertarian to take on it. It might be wise for large companies to step very cautiously into this new technology while people hammer out how it should be used safely.
What does everyone else think about this? Is your emotional state (when not explicitly shared on a per-instance basis) private? And more pertinently, are automatically detected measures of your emotional state akin to surreptitiously gaining access to your mental health records? Should it be illegal for businesses to mine, gather, index, correlate, sell, or use etc. that information for their own purposes?