Microsoft Research Adds 'Mood Detection' To Smartphones

angry tapir writes "Researchers at Microsoft Research have produced a prototype software system that can be used on smartphones to infer a user's mood. The 'MoodScope' system produced by researchers uses smartphone usage patterns to determine whether someone is happy, calm, excited, bored or stressed and could potentially add a new dimension to to mobile apps (as well as, as the researchers note, open up a Pandora's Box of privacy issues). The researchers created a low-power background service for iPhones and Android handsets that (with training) can offer reasonable detection of mood and offers and API that app developers could hook into."

Comments

Smoke and Mirrors

[Antipater]

Pshaw. We know all it's doing is changing color based on our body temperature! Chris Petrila fooled me with this in the first grade, and I won't let Microsoft fool me with it now!

Re:Hmmm

[gstoddart]

but his blind anti-ms zealotry still peeks through and gets upvotes.

Oh, it's not blind, I assure you.

Microsoft drove me to Linux in the early 90's by producing a crap operating system.

I've got an XBox 360 and I run Vista at home (yes, really, and I actually like it), I'm not some knee-jerk Microsoft hater -- I hate them on reasoned principle, and I don't trust them more than I need to. But I do own and use some of their products.

But, again I ask, WTF would I want my phone to know my mood for, and why would I trust Microsoft with the information? Should I be willing to provide even more personal information to make them money and for them to hand over to the first government agency who asks?

I stand by my assertion that Microsoft Research is a big gaping money pit that spends billions every year on stuff people don't want -- how much has been spent on the Microsoft Home of the Future?

I'm sure they'll incorporate it into the new XBone so they can report back to the mothership -- but I sure as heck wouldn't voluntarily install this. I can see no benefit whatsoever in having my phone know if I'm in a bad mood. It just sounds like fetishizing technology.