How Do You Feel? Affectiva's AI Can Tell

Imagine powering up your digital device and, after a quick scan of your facial expression, having it respond with, “Hey there, what’s going on?”.

- Sophia Stuart

Massachusetts-based Affectiva is working on this type of “socio-emotive A.I.,” and PCMag met the company’s director of market development, Jim Deal, at Unity3D’s Unite 2016 conference recently.

Companies know that humans want to be liked, and so they don’t always tell the truth about a game, movie, or other commercial product when asked. People might say, “It’s great!,” but they’re not actually going to hand over any cash to buy the next upgrade. But the company takes them at their word and invests millions in development, only to have the product flop. Deal became keenly aware of this problem during his time at Microsoft and as founder of Airtight Games, his own software company.

“Sometimes it was clear, during research trials, that feedback is skewed. You’re making games, they’re just happy to be there, so they didn’t want to be negative, and we get a false reading,” he said.

Unsurprisingly, companies want to cut to the truth. That’s why Affectiva’s investors include not just the the National Science Foundation and Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers but also advertising giant WPP.