Zoom AI emotion recognition plan draws human rights fire 

Plans by Zoom to develop an AI-based system that will monitor and detect the feelings and emotions of its users drew fire from US human and digital rights campaigners, ACLU, EPIC, Fight for the Future, and others.

According to an April 2022 report by Protocol, Zoom plans to introduce a suite of new features under the name Zoom IQ for Sales that use emotion AI to produce post-meeting transcripts and sentiment analysis to meeting hosts.

However, critics of emotion AI (or 'affective computing') argue the technology is often inaccurate as a person's facial expressions can be different to what they are feeling. 

It can also be discriminatory, with research showing the ways people express emotions vary significantly across cultures and situations. 

The technology is also said to be intrusive and easily misused. 

Research, advocacy 🧮

• Fight for the Future (2022). Dear Zoom open letter

News, commentary, analysis 🗞️

• https://www.protocol.com/enterprise/emotion-ai-sales-virtual-zoom

• https://www.protocol.com/enterprise/zoom-emotion-ai-aclu-rights

• https://www.protocol.com/bulletins/zoom-emotion-ai-fight-future

• https://www.inputmag.com/tech/intel-classroom-ai-student-surveillance-facial-recognition

• https://www.biometricupdate.com/202204/reported-ai-based-emotion-recognition-by-zoom-irks-rights-advocates

• https://www.avinteractive.com/news/collaboration/zoom-urged-abandon-interest-emotion-reading-19-04-2022/