Facial monitoring

The all-telling eye


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Readers' comments



This is just creepy. Technology that can read my face and determine what I like and do not like. Although it might be interesting and my facial expression might like the idea of a bikini model as an ad compared to bath and body works ad. I still do not want ads popping up on my screen just because my male testosterone was humored for a second by a dumb ad. This world is advancing for the better as everyone says so why do i feel like running off and living on my own island catching fish and growing food to stay alive.


While the idea of all of your facial expressions being monitored while you are using the computer is very creepy, they make is sure in the article that you must allow the camera to be used for that purpose. If you don't want it to be used you can simply click "no".

This article shows how many sectors are putting more emphasis on learning about people as individuals to market items or to learn more about how human behavior and emotions effect economic decisions made. We are finally learning that you cannot determine human decisions based on simply a theory learned in school or a mathematical equation.


It is incredible what technology can do in today's time. It has so many benefits that could really help the world out. However, I think that this is a little overboard. If this idea is actually put into use, where does that leave peoples' privacy? I mean yes, it would be amazing to be able to sense what a person's emotion toward an advertisement or other things would be, but that would also be somewhat creepy. Also, it's not like everyone smiles or gets happy when they see an ad or something they want, so then what? The way I see it, people will not want to be tracked by face reading technology, and half the time it may not work, so companies will be wasting their time and money creating the technology to do this.


This new technology will soon expose internet users like never before. To give in the control of your webcam is a serious issue. Although it probably will be used for a greater good; for better, personalized and more successful advertisement, it could end up in the wrong hands.

To allow a computer to detect how happy, sad, motivated, mad, annoyed you are will be a big advantage for a company who wants to advertise its products. But what companies will you trust? Will you get a Pop-Up asking for you to allow them to view you? Will they be given access forever to you webcam, or just for the brief moment the ad 'plays' in front of the user?

Advertisement on the internet is sufficiently annoying. With the typical "You WON!" advertisement repeating itself every 10 seconds, I start to wonder, how much we can trust advertisement companies. People wont Google and research every ad company in order to determine whether they will trust them or not, and what if they are not trustworthy? What if they are trying to access you camera to spy on you? Should computers have a physical on/off button for their webcams, in order to strengthen or even ensure our privacy?

The idea, and the technology is spectacular. And as the article states, this can be given a more useful, humane use. But to gain access to people as they surf the internet, and even to be able to examine their vital signs; it sounds like a privacy violation to me. This should be used in hospitals, to "keep an eye" on patients... not to and eye on the rest of the world. This is a neat things that can be useful if monitored and controlled, but there are many privacy questions not answered!


The technology is definitely interesting, and exciting for some of the possibilities mentioned (especially the health-related ones); however, the advertising possibilities would cause a huge public outcry. Everyone is already mentioning the privacy and "Big Brother" issues, and even though people would have to give consent to allow ad agencies to use the webcams, people would be uncomfortable simply knowing the technology exists. In addition, the technological trend is that one thing leads to another and eventually it would likely be made difficult to refuse, given the eventual incentives and other things that will come up. For example, websites may force you to give consent to use certain features or view certain content, or EULA's may put something in about it (which would be a huge deal, because people tend not to read them and would unknowingly agree to it). There are all kinds of possibilities that would eventually back people into a corner, persuading them to give consent. The technology has great potential in the medical and entertainment fields, but will meet strong resistance in the advertising world.


It is pretty creepy that these companys are looking at you when one of their ads pop up on your computer. There has to be some privacy laws against that. But even with saying that it is pretty cool that they can use that to see how people respond to their ads. It will be good for all companies just so they can know what people think about their products without even having to ask.


I'm sure the question of privacy and safety will be certain amongst users of the internet and web cam. Most people will turn theirs off. How far does technology want to go with programming our faces. No matter how accurate technology wants to believe it is, it isn't. Just because I lower my eyebrows doesn't mean I hate an advertisement, it could mean for so many other things. This is not a certain way to be accurate. Although, measuring heart rate is interesting and can be beneficial. It would be nice to be able to check your heart rate accurately after a work out...or can you already do that? Sometimes its hard to keep up with technology.


Reading this article creeps me out and it is sad that society is becoming this way. It is very scary to think that soon, our blood pressure and emotions/feelings will be visible to companies for their use. I feel like even though they say we will have to consent, that people will hack into webcams and do it anyways. This very much scares me, and is taking technology to a whole new level. I mean I think it is very cool that society is able to produce something such as this, but it's taking our privacy and basically throwing it down the drain.


This article brings up a very useful technology that has a lot of potential. One very important aspect of this that is critical to understand, however, is any consumer software that would utilize this technology needs the permission of the user to implement it. For example, as the article pointed out, any advertising applications of a computers web cam would require the user to opt in to the program. If this were not the case, it would prompt many legal concerns about privacy. Still, there can be incentives to give this permission to programs, as there are plenty of advantages. This type of software and technology is still very new and many of the details and possible applications are still being considered, but it is clear that there is much potential in this type of technology.


I think this is a seriously creepy concept. Ads already track what sites you go to and then display ads that will contrast to that. This whole concepts is getting a little too close to your individual likes an dislikes.


I think it is in a way an invasion of our rights and personal privacy. If I was really interested in an add I would click it immediately. Usually if I do not click it the first time then that means i have no interest in it and I don't want to be bothered by the ads persistently popping up. If it is done for studying and as research with volunteers just to see reaction of consumers then that is fine. I just don't agree with people not knowing.




This is scary to say the least. Before if you didn't want to deal with those annoying mall advertisers selling perfume you could stay at home and shop online. Well, know those annoying advertisers are online AND they are analyzing your every move. Where has privacy gone? Yes, there are settings to limit the tracking ability of companies, but many people of the older generation have no idea how to do this. The technology that's in place and talked about in this article could potentially lead to more privacy issues and a gateway for hackers to get even more personal information out of someone.


Technologically speaking, this is an amazing development and show how fare humans have learned to be able to develop a system which n read our facial expressions, connect them to our emotions and then continue to use that information in a ''useful'' manner. however, i cannot help but think that sometimes, with technologies like these, things may have been taken a bit too far.

First of all, human emotions are an unpredictable thing. yes, there are common features among people that is noticeable when they are happy it displeased and so on but then there are those emotions, like sarcasm, that the program might not be able to pick up on. so in this case, a person maybe persistently irritated with adds that they may have found funny in that instant or just sarcastically sniggered at it but the system read as a positive signal.

Then, as mentioned before, there is the issue with privacy and hacking. It is not hard for a motivated hacker to hack into any system and when it comes to webcam, facial recording and detecting, privacy is a big issue. This would have to be considered very carefully before such a system is released into the market.


I think this idea is really disturbing and totally invades peoples privacy. Having a webcam on the computer that detects your mood and your vital signs is a bit much for me, and I feel that with the way people can hack on others computers, personal things could be revealed. However, I do think the video game part of this is neat, but still rather strange.


This is a interesting way for marketers to find out information about their target market. However, I wonder if this doesn't invade your privacy. I have heard of marketers testing people brainwaves and eye movements however that has normally been done in a lab.


This article demonstrates both how helpful and how scary technology can be. It is good for so many things, but yet it has the possibilities to completely destroy one's sense of privacy and could be capable of helping someone to do some really horrible things.

Tarik Jamali Phillip

I believe this is a blessing and a curse. It's an advancement to technology that can be used to for many things such as facial detection to find criminals and terrorists. I also believe it can also be a curse by tapping into people's privacy. It can maybe be too much. It's just like how cookies are saved to people computers once to go to a shopping website. Now wherever they go ads from that website will pop up. If the government can do this, what can't they do. I believe that this technology has the potential to go overboard and go beyond peoples perception of privacy. This technology could be amazing to help people find lost parents or something even more amazing but it can just also be weird. Personally this type of advancement is creepy. I don't want my webcam to read my mood. For medical reasons, scanning my vital sings is amazing but I can see this "all telling eye" will be a problem.


This is very impressive technology and I can see why marketers would love this. Of course, this would obviously violate some privacy laws. I would not want my face to be detected at all times. I believe that this should only be allowed on computers where the user has agreed to let this technology work on their computers. I am already paranoid of what kind of surveillance is done. With technology, it would be so easy to watch what any person was doing at any time. I only hope that our government would have the decency to keep our privacy. After what happened with the apparent phone hacking in London, I would be quite suspicious of this webcam technology. I think that the heart rate monitor is a great new technology. I hope that technology will continue to be used for good intentions and that one day it can even help to cure all of the horrible diseases that people have to deal with everyday.


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