Microsoft Corp said on Tuesday it would stop selling technology that analyzes people’s emotions based on a facial image and would no longer provide unlimited access to its facial recognition tools.
The decision reflects efforts by leading cloud service providers to curb the indiscriminate exposure of sensitive technologies at a time when lawmakers in USA The US and Europe continue to weigh legal limitations.
At least since last year, microsoft has been reviewing whether emotion recognition systems are based on scientific paradigms.
“These efforts raised important questions about privacy, the lack of consensus on the definition of ’emotions,’ and the inability to generalize the relationship between facial expression and emotional state across use cases, regions, and demographics,” he said. Sarah Birdproduct manager in the Azure AI unit of microsofton a blog.
Customers will have a year before losing access to artificial intelligence tools that claim to infer emotions, gender, age, smile, facial hair, hair and makeup.
Google Cloud, of Alphabet Inc.., embarked on a similar assessment last year, first reported by Reuters.
Google blocked 13 expected reactions in its emotion reading tool and put four existing ones under review, such as happiness and sadness. The company is evaluating a new system that analyzes movements such as frowning and smiling, without trying to associate them with an emotion.
Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday.
Microsoft also said customers must now get approval to use its facial recognition services, which can let people log into websites or open folders using a facial scan.
The company asked its customers to avoid situations that violate privacy or in which the technology could cause problems, such as the identification of minors, but did not explicitly prohibit such uses.