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

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[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.

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.

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: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.