During nwHacks 2018, one of the projects that was showed off was Loki, a Face ID emotion tracking system. It’s a proof-of-concept social network app that uses Face ID to detect what emotion you’re experiencing.
Face ID Tracking
Then, the facial data is put through a neural network trained to map facial data to emotions. It then uses the emotion it thinks you’re experiencing to modify the content you see in the app.
Don’t miss the best of The Mac Observer
Set us as a preferred source and our Apple reporting ranks higher in your Google Search results and Discover feed — one tap, no account changes.
For a while, there were fears that Face ID could be used exactly like this. Whether it’s an advertiser tracking your eyes to make sure you look at the ad, to Facebook manipulating your emotions even more.
Thankfully, Apple only lets developers access basic facial data [PDF], although that doesn’t seem to have stopped this team. If this was a real app though, it’s unlikely it would have made it’s way onto the App Store, because of Apple’s review process. Still, it’s interesting—if not terrifying—to see how systems like this could potentially work.
Discussion