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

Advertising

[invid]

When I'm sad will I suddenly see lots of adds for antidepressant?

Re:Advertising

[ArcadeMan]

When I'm sad...

...Clippy will pop up...

Endless loop.

Coming soon courtesy of MADD

[Anonymous Coward]

Automatic text to law enforcement if intoxicated and in motion greater than 10 MPH, complete with location coordinates and picture from phone camera. You will have to agree to this when you get your phone. Having a phone is a privilege, not a right.

Get out of my personal space Microsoft

[Piata]

Dear Microsoft, I don't want my phone to know what I eat for breakfast, how I'm feeling or how I choose to spend my time. I just need it to make phone calls and check my email. That's it. That's all.

Can you please stop being such a creepy digital stalker? It's gone well past disturbing at this point.

Re:Get out of my personal space Microsoft

[digitalchinky]

Whenever I approach society, particularly women, I'm very quickly enlightened about my emotional state : ) I don't think hearing it again from my phone would add any useful data to that stack of baggage. One thing that would be extremely cool would be a sensor for smell, I was born completely without this so I'd love to know if I smell bad, gas is leaking, burning and so on. I never actually even knew smell existed until I was in my teens, it took another year or so after that for me to believe people weren't just faking it.

Re:Get out of my personal space Microsoft

[rogueippacket]

I cannot agree more with this. Every new version of Android/iOS/Windows Phone seems to be all about more integration with various advertising platforms (Google, Facebook, Twitter, the list goes on) - with Samsung even calling their phones a "Life Companion" now. I'm sorry, but I put a ring (not a ringtone) on my life companion, and I don't give a shit about tweeting or "checking in" when I'm on the crapper. Making phone calls and responding to emails are my killer apps, and that's it.

Hmmm

[gstoddart]

The researchers created a low-power background service for iPhones and Android handsets

I currently own both an iPad and and Nexus tablet ... and if Microsoft thinks I'd be willing to install any of their shit on them, they're sadly mistaken.

WTF would I want my phone to know anything about my mood for? And why should I trust Microsoft with the data? They'll just roll over and hand it to the NSA anyway.

Microsoft Research has specialized in making shit nobody has wanted for years. Pity they couldn't focus on making products people actually want.

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.

Re:Hmmm

[bondsbw]

Well, you may not like Apple much longer either: http://www.macrumors.com/2013/06/25/new-apis-in-ios-7-allow-developers-to-detect-blinking-and-smiling-in-photos/

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!

Windows phone???

[Toshito]

They don't make a version for their own phone OS?

Re:Windows phone???

[guttentag]

They don't make a version for their own phone OS?

Because hardly anyone buys phones with their phone OS. True story... not a troll:

I have a friend who has been anti-smartphone for years. She absolutely refused to buy a smartphone because she knew she'd end up playing with it all the time. Every time her cheap "dumb" phone died, she'd go get another cheap dumb phone. A couple months ago she told me she got a Lumia. I was shocked. She said she only got it because the salesperson was offering it for free because they weren't selling. That and he said it was so bad she figured she wouldn't get sucked into playing with it. Her review after a few weeks: "It's pretty, but I hate using it. Which is exactly what I wanted." Reminds me of Domino in Thunderball (the novel), telling the tobacconist she wants a carton of cigarettes that is so terrible it will make her stop smoking.

I'm not saying no one uses Windows phones. There are people who have them specifically because they hate them and they were free.

We're sorry,

[froth-bite]

We sense that re-arranging your icons made you angry...we will find them again, trust us :)

Missing something?

[MiniMike]

The researchers created a low-power background service for iPhones and Android handsets

I guess they had to drop the Windows phone variant, as the moods only varied between 'disappointed' and 'highly annoyed'.

Re:Missing something?

[hraponssi]

Yes, as a WP user, I find it comforting to know even MS research does not believe it to be something worth using.. :)

Re:This is moronic.

[sirber]

More and more crap that makes the phone slow.

Re:Mood detection was to be added to phone trees

[Roger W Moore]

If a phone had this option, I'd hack it so it would always read "PISSED"

If your phone is running windows 8 you probably won't need to hack it.

Leaked source code

[RoboJ1M]

[Flags]
public enum Moods
{
    FeckedOffWithWindows,
    WishingTheydBoughtAnIPhone,
    WishingTheydBoughtAnAndroid,
}