Systems that can identify emotions in images of faces might soon
collate millions of peoples' reactions to events and could even replace
opinion polls
IF THE computers we stare at all day could read our faces, they would probably know us better than anyone.
That vision may not be so far off.
Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Media Lab are
developing software that can read the feelings behind facial
expressions. In some cases, the computers outperform people. The
software could lead to empathetic devices and is being used to evaluate
and develop better adverts.
But the commercial uses are just "the low-hanging fruit", says Rana el Kaliouby,
a member of the Media Lab's Affective Computing group. The software is
getting so good and so easy to use that it could collate millions of
peoples' reactions to an event as they sit watching it at home,
potentially replacing opinion polls, influencing elections and perhaps
fuelling revolutions.
"I feel like this technology can
enable us to give everybody a non-verbal voice, leverage the power of
the crowd," el Kaliouby says. She and her colleagues have developed a
program called MindReader
that can interpret expressions on the basis of a few seconds of video.
The software tracks 22 points around the mouth, eyes and nose, and notes
the texture, colour, shape and movement of facial features. The
researchers used machine-learning techniques to train the software to tell the difference between happiness and sadness, boredom and interest, disgust and contempt. In tests to appear in the IEEE Transactions on Affective Computing,
the software proved to be better than humans at telling joyful smiles
from frustrated smiles. A commercial version of the system, called
Affdex, is now being used to test adverts (see "Like what you see?").
Collecting emotional reactions in real
time from millions of people could profoundly affect public polling. El
Kaliouby, who is originally from Egypt, was in Cairo during the
uprising against then-president Hosni Mubarak in 2011. She was startled
that Mubarak seemed to think people liked his presidency, despite clear
evidence to the contrary.
"She thought maybe Mubarak didn't
think a million people was a big enough response to believe that people
are upset," lab director Rosalind Picard said at the lab's spring
meeting on 25 April. "There are 80 million people in Egypt, and most of
them were not there. If we could allow them the opportunity to safely
and anonymously opt in and give their non-verbal feedback and join that
conversation, that would be very powerful."
Pollsters could even collect facial
reactions on the streets, or analyse the reaction of an audience
listening to a politician's speech. Picard's group recently ran an
MIT-wide experiment called Mood Meter, placing cameras all over campus
to gauge the general mood. To preserve privacy, the cameras didn't store
any video or record faces - they just counted the number of people in
the frame, and how many were smiling.
Frank Newport, editor in chief of
political polling firm Gallup, headquartered in Washington DC, says such
software could be useful. "There's no question that emotions and
instincts have an impact in politics," he says. "We're certainly open to
looking at anything along those lines." But he'd want to know how well
facial responses predict actual votes.
Picard worries that the technology
might have a dark side. "My fear is that some of these dictators would
want to blow away the village that doesn't like them," she says. It
would be important to protect the identities and IP addresses of
viewers, she says.
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