Microsoft has developed a new system aimed at analyzing individuals’ emotions based on facial biometrics.

The tool is currently available via Microsoft’s Project Oxford website, where users are invited to upload photos for scanning. Microsoft’s system analyzes the faces depicted in those photos based on eight key emotional criteria: Anger, Contempt, Disgust, Fear, Happiness, Neutral, Sadness, and Surprise.

While it seems like a fun diversion for now, Microsoft has actually released an API for the system, allowing developers to integrate it into any number of potential devices and applications.

It isn’t an entirely novel system. Similar facial biometrics technology has been used to track comedy club audience laughter, to analyze patient pain in hospital settings, and even in atechnological art project about judging a book by its cover. But if Microsoft’s technology becomes popular among developers, it could see a range of more everyday applications, such as tailoring marketing based on consumers’ emotions – a prospect with perhaps more profound applications than the photo upload system currently in place on the Project Oxford site.

Source: The Guardian

—

November 12, 2015 – by Alex Perala