Microsoft’s move away from emotion recognition software is another sign of the growing privacy priority of high technology. The company also acknowledges that there is little scientific evidence behind the technology. “Experts inside and outside the company have pointed out the lack of scientific consensus on the definition of emotions,” Natasha Crampton, Microsoft’s Chief AI Officer, wrote in a blog post. “Or the growing privacy concerns about this type of capability.” Facial emotion recognition software uses advanced artificial intelligence to determine a person’s emotional state. It compares a subject’s facial expressions, pupil size, mouth shape and other visual elements with a database of thousands of photographs of people with different known emotions. The AI then attributes an emotion to the issue. Microsoft and other technology companies have been working on the technology for several years, along with face recognition software. The company is making a sudden turn in what they call the “Microsoft Artificial Intelligence Standard”. With the advent of emotion recognition technology, Microsoft will be joining Google and others in restricting access to face recognition software. Microsoft will introduce transparency guidelines and what it calls “protective railings” to ensure that customers who use face recognition do so in an ethical manner. izusek / Getty Images Google stopped selling face recognition products in 2018, citing the need for more secure technology policies. IBM stopped supplying government and police services with face recognition technology in 2020 in the wake of the assassination of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Meta (the company formerly known as Facebook) closed its face recognition program in 2021 and stopped recognizing people in photos uploaded to Facebook. Azure Face, the artificial intelligence system developed by Microsoft to provide face recognition capabilities, is used primarily by private healthcare and research companies, with some local government agencies using it to track people in public. Although Microsoft does not release exact details about its customers, the data show at least 356 current Azure Face subscribers. Microsoft face recognition customers will have one year at their disposal and then lose access to Azure Face.
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