Does This Headline Know You're Reading It?

An anonymous reader writes "Not yet, but it could. German artificial intelligence researchers are combining JavaScript with eye-tracking hardware to create 'text 2.0,' which 'infers user intentions.' Unimportant words also fade out while you're skimming the text, and a bookmark automatically appears if you glance away. It can pronounce the words you're reading, and reading certain words can trigger the appearance of footnotes or even translations, biographies, definitions, and sound effects or animations, almost like the truly interactive books in Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age. 'With the help of an eye tracker, Text 2.0 follows your progress and presents effects just in time,' the researchers explain in a video. Meanwhile, DFKI has already created a free 'Processing Easy Eye Tracker plugin' (or PEEP) to manipulate windows with what they call 'gaze-controlled tab expose,' while there's speculation similar technology may be adopted by Apple. Apple has already purchased Tobii's eye-tracking hardware, and 'Whether these are for internal research only or for a future product, Apple is characteristically not saying.'"

Comments

In Soviet Russia Webpage reads you?

[Tiger4]

Really? Is this really what we wanted??

Re:In Soviet Russia Webpage reads you?

[tomhudson]

Corey Hart has the solution: "I wear my sunglasses at night ..."

Re:In Soviet Russia Webpage reads you?

[Eladith]

Text that can understand the intentions of the reader and respond accordingly could be quite useful, for example by explaining some portion of text in more detail. Unfortunately intelligent enough content production system required for such is probably way harder to implement than ads that follow the reader's gaze.

This will do wonders ...

[jsnipy]

For porn :/

Re:This will do wonders ...

[2obvious4u]

Or it could prove you're gay because you keep glaring at cock.

YAY! more possibilities to accidentally do things!

[AlgorithMan]

I already hate when webpages open menus, just because I moved my mouse over them (and not even a damn delay - they open instantly, god damn it!) and I also hated mouse gestures, because I don't want the OS to interfere with what I'm doing, just because I coincidentally moved the mouse in a certain way...

that's why I think this (and also the mind-writing from earlier today) are very very VERY bad ideas... some people might find them exciting, but that's just people who haven't been around computers long enough to know all the (similar) bad ideas, that already existed before...