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.

Re:In Soviet Russia Webpage reads you?

[shadowrat]

eye tracking is cool, but the description of this use of it sounds lame. Most of this functionality already exists in the user's head. I already form visions of what i'm reading. i already ignore words that i am not looking at. The bookmark part when i look away sounds mildly useful, but the rest sounds like the kind of overzealous anticipatory systems we have today.

my iphone constantly switches to landscape if i so much as pivot while looking at it, but refuses to flip when i legitimately turn it. Predictive text and autocompletion on my phone and in office suites screw me constantly by replacing legitimate words with what the application thinks i really meant. I'm leary of any computer system that tries to anticipate my desires or predict my actions. To my experience they are usually wrong and a hinderence more than a help.

That said, i do think eye tracking is cool. And i don't know what this research will ultimately yeild. If they discover that this paradigm sucks, it's time well spent.

In the immortal words of cats and dogs everywhere.

[Em Emalb]

DO NOT WANT.

Damn it, I guess this webcam built into my laptop has suddenly been rendered damned near completely useless.

It can only work if everyone has a webcam

[Attila Dimedici]

This only works if everyone has a webcam that is sending feedback to the website. I can see how everybody on slashdot would like that.

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.

Do companies pay attention to details

[peragrin]

Yet another product that will fail. I am cross eyed no surgery will ever be able to straighten my eyes out enough for a computer to track corectly. Let alone what happens if you wear glasses. The refraction or in some cases polarized lens and bifocals will throw such setups into disarray.

What hapens if more than one person is looking at the screen? I forgot who but some one recently made camera with motion sensing that couldn't detect black people in less than perfect lighting. What happens if some is wearing a colored contact lens? Will that throw the system off?

These lab tests always seem to fail in the real world.

Re:Nothing "2.0"

[Shin-LaC]

It's just you. The rest of us won't use it because it's a bad idea.

Oh, no

[physburn]

onLookAway(
popUp( "you looked away from this messages; please look back");
playSound("annoyingBleep.mid");
setPicture("porno_woman.jpg");
);

onLookAt( popUp(" Please click the link");
playSound("click+click+click.mid");
setPicture("Advert.jpg");
);

---

It will happen It will happen, save us

---

Internet Advertising Feed @ Feed Distiller

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...