Apple Buys Artificial Intelligence Firm That Reads Emotions

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Apple has purchased a company that can read people’s emotions, by recognizing their facial expressions using artificial intelligence.

Your iPhone could soon tell you how you are feeling at any given time by using facial recognition technology and producing the results for a quick analysis. It could be used by sales executives, medical practitioners, gamers, security analysts and others to analyse and diagnose faces in general. The new technology could have many benefits if used intelligently.

Manchester Evening News reports:

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The technology from Emotient – which recognises nine emotions – can detect the slightest changes and can tell whether people are feeling disgusted, angry or surprised.

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Until now, the technology was mainly used by doctors and retailers. The technology also benefited advertisers, who were able to understand whether or not the impact was positive on viewers.

It has the ability to track emotions of a large group of people at once. Other emotions it interprets include joy, fear, contempt, sadness, and also a neutral expression.

To demonstrate what the technology can assist companies with, in August last year, Emotient’s software was used during a presidential candidate debate on Fox News featuring Donald Trump and Ted Cruz.

It also released a Google Glass app that could be worn by salespeople, for training and to analyse customer reaction in real time.

It is unclear as to what Apple has in mind with access to this technology and the company is renown for being particularly hush-hush about its innovations.

Apple confirmed the acquisition, which was originally reported in the Wall Street Journal, saying it ‘buys smaller companies from time to time and we generally do not discuss our purpose or plans’.