Microsoft will phase out facial recognition AI that could detect emotions

Microsoft is keenly aware of the mounting backlash toward facial recognition, and it's shuttering a significant project in response. The company has revealed it will "retire" facial recognition technology that it said could infer emotions as well as characteristics like age, gender and hair. The AI raised privacy questions, Microsoft said, and offering a framework created the potential for discrimination and other abuses. There was also no clear consensus on the definition of emotions, and no way to create a generalized link between expressions and emotions. New users of Microsoft's Face programming framework no longer have access to these attribute detection features.