Microsoft’s emotion-reading tool is available to developers in beta now. Microsoft is the one behind this new “emotion-sensing platform” which picks out human feelings through analyzing photos.
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This is all part of the labor of love that is known as Project Oxford, where Microsoft makes good use of its repository of machine learning and artificial intelligence experience in order to come up with sophisticated tools that are able to be used by just about anyone without cost.
Emotions that are detected include anger, contempt, disgust, fear, happiness, neutral, sadness and surprise.
Project Oxford, a suite of developer tools based on Microsoft’s machine learning and artificial intelligence research, was introduced in May at the Build conference. Microsoft has begun a public beta for a new application programming interface (API) that can identify emotions as expressed on a person’s face in a still image.
Developers can find the APIs at the Microsoft Project Oxford website. It will also roll out a new video feature that would let users cut smartphone videos to include only when people start moving in the shots later this year, as well a spell-checking API service that will update the dictionary with new slang words and brand names. Also included is processing used in Microsoft’s own Hyperlapse software to stabilize video and track motion. Skype Translator and Cortana are two prominent examples of Microsoft investment in creating our future AI overlords, and Bing is in on the game with outward facing research and betting tools like Bing Predicts.
Custom Recognition Intelligent Services (CRIS) can tailor voice recognition for a specific situation, such as a noisy venue. Microsoft said that it will be available as an invite-only beta by the end of the year.
Put together, speaker recognition and face detection could be used as part of the foundation of a security system similar to Google’s Project Abacus, which authenticates a user based on a variety of signals including voice and facial recognition. Other new tools announced Wednesday will be released as beta versions by the end of the year.
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Updates to face APIs: Project Oxford will also be updated in general, including facial hair and smile prediction, gender identification, and visual age estimation. Today, the software announced that it was adding emotion recognition to the mix.
