While Apple is reportedly working on AI technology that can detect mental health states and emotion, some are skeptical. It is unclear and still unproven whether AI is reliable for producing clear diagnoses and uncertain how such "emotion AI" would be used in the field, according to Jorge Barraza, assistant professor of the practice of psychology at the University of Southern California and CSO at Immersion, a neuroscience tech vendor. "When we infer things from emotion AI at the macro level -- meaning that we tend to see patterns at the macro level -- at the individual level it starts becoming a little more dubious," Barraza said. Outside of a social context, "it's unclear how much meaning [emotion] has in order for us to understand what people's psychological experiences are," he added. "Different types of expressions or emoting might have different meanings whether it's in a social context or whether it is not."

The ability to register the emotional response of customers or potential customers from their facial expressions or words they speak or write, is a growing business and another instance of how AI is bringing new capability to the table. Emotion AI is the market seen by Affectiva, while emotion recognition is the market described by EMRAYS. Both are using powerful software incorporating AI to measure emotions people register when they view an ad or write a response. Affectiva spun out of MIT's Media Lab in 2009, co-founded by Dr. Rosalind Picard and Dr. Rana el Kaliouby, now the CEO. Dr. Picard, an engineer, had published the book Affective Computing in 1997.

Your passcode can be hacked, but your face is yours and yours alone. That's the thinking behind Apple's latest security measure, which is more high-tech and a bit more intimate than anything else on the market. With Face ID, which Apple unveiled Tuesday, owners of the company's new top-of-the-line iPhone X will be able to unlock their phone, pay for products and use mobile apps just by glancing at their device. "Nothing has ever been simpler, more natural and effortless," Phil Schiller, senior vice president of worldwide marketing, said during Apple's first product launch at its new headquarters in Cupertino, Calif. "Face ID is the future of how we unlock our smartphones and protect our sensitive information."

A worker demonstrated facial recognition security features on the MasterCard Inc. stand at the Mobile World Congress in this arranged photograph in Barcelona, Spain, on Wednesday, Feb. 24, 2016. Why did Apple acquire RealFace the AI facial recognition company? Why did Apple acquire RealFace the AI facial recognition company? There are many reasons, however the biggest reason may be the one few see today. Today it was announced [1] Apple acquired the Israeli facial recognition AI company Real Face.

The arms race in Silicon Valley is on for artificial intelligence. Facebook is working on a virtual personal assistant that can read people's faces and decide whether or not to let them in your home. Google is investing in the technology to power self-driving cars, identify people on its photo service and build a better messaging app. Now Apple is adding to its artificial intelligence arsenal. The iPhone maker purchased Emotient, a San Diego maker of facial expression recognition software that can detect emotions to assist advertisers, retailers, doctors and many other professions.

A new app for Google Glass claims to be able to tell you exactly how someone is feeling. Called Emotient, is can tell whether a person is happy, sad angry or confused - and can monitor an entire room of people at once. The firm says the technology could even be used by advertisers to gauge reactions to their products. The Emotient software processes facial expressions and provides an aggregate emotional read-out, measuring overall sentiment (positive, negative or neutral); primary emotions (joy, surprise, sadness, fear, disgust, contempt and anger); and advanced emotions (frustration and confusion). The Emotient software detects and processes anonymous facial expressions of individuals and groups that the Glass wearer sees to determine an aggregate sentiment read-out; it does not store video or images.

Across Silicon Valley, technology companies are scrambling to make their software smarter with the help of artificial intelligence. Both Apple and Google have made significant improvements to their virtual assistants, Siri and Google Now, that help them better understand what a user might need before he or she asks. Meanwhile, Facebook has unveiled plans to create its own intelligent chat bot that can perform tasks on your behalf. As of this week, Apple has more firepower in the AI department. The Cupertino, Calif.-based company has purchased Emotient, a company that uses artificial intelligence to interpret a person's emotions, The Wall Street Journal first reported Thursday.

Human beings are social animals. As part of our neural wiring, humans assess each other's emotional cues on a subconscious level without realizing it. However, some people, such as individuals with autism, have more trouble interpreting these cues. Some cues are difficult for everyone to read. Other cues are even intentionally misleading.

Consumers can look forward to a future increasingly defined by a global voice, and dominated by robots, the Internet of Things (IoT), and virtual and augmented reality (the last of which has become considerably more plausible since the release of Pokemon Go), according to a new trends report by Toronto-based non-profit innovation hub MaRS. Arguably more fascinating than the report's conclusion, however, is its methods: To determine the trends that will define tech's future, authors Farah Momen and Sue McGill calculated the startups that were receiving the most funding, then divided them into sectors. "By analyzing the capital raised over the past year, we can understand: a) which consumer and commerce verticals are seeing the most activity here in Canada (such as wearables and foodtech); and b) which specific, innovative consumer and enterprise business-to-business companies are gaining traction in the market," Momen and McGill wrote in a July 7 press release announcing the report. While ecommerce might be delivering a wider variety of products to consumers than ever before, the final purchase decision is still frequently influenced by their shopping experience, Momen and McGill write – and advancements in VR and AR have created new opportunities for companies to provide an immersive, unforgettable experience, with manufacturers such as Lexus and Volvo implementing virtual test-driving simulations, and Ikea adding an AR feature to its mobile app that lets viewers virtually place and view nearly 300 of the Swedish furniture giant's products in their homes. Sure, we all know about Alexa and Cortana, but more interesting to Momen and McGill is the role that digital shopping assistants could play in retail's future, with companies like Stitch Fix already delivering monthly boxes of curated items chosen by a combination of machine and human stylists.

Computers Don't Know When You Are Happy--Apple Is Adding a Previously Unseen Dimension To Your Device From the moment you are born, assuming normal eyesight, we open our eyes and fixate on the 43 muscles that control 1000s of nuances of facial expressions and emotion intent in the face of our parents. They inform a reaction to how to interpret the world, an extended sensor to help learn the basic emotions and reactions to the world around us. "Emotient is the leading authority on facial expression recognition and analysis technologies that are enabling a future of emotion aware computing." In the Spring of 2013 a team of scientists and researchers at the Machine Perception Lab at University of California, San Diego, was forming the technology and the basic elements of what was to become Emotient. The founding team were widely regarded as spearheading the use of machine learning for facial expression analysis with over 20 years of experience pioneering machine learning and computer vision technology for facial behavior analysis. The team has published hundreds of peer reviewed scientific publications, starting in 1995, which have been cited by thousands of other researchers in the field. Building around the work of Paul Ekman, Ph.D.[1] a pioneer in the study of emotions and facial expressions, and a professor emeritus of psychology in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of California Medical School (UCSF) where he has been active for 32 years, Emotient used AI to machine learn his ground breaking research in micro-emotions.