Accuracy of three commercial automatic emotion recognition systems across different individuals and their facial expressions

Abstract

Automatic facial expression recognition systems can provide information about our emotions and how they change over time. However, based on different statistical methods the results of automatic systems have not yet been compared. In the current paper we evaluate the emotion detection between three different commercial systems (i.e. Affectiva, Kairos and Microsoft) when detecting dynamic and spontaneous facial expressions. Even if the study was performed on a limited sample of videos, the results show significant differences between the systems for the same video and per system across comparable facial expressions. Finally, we reflect on the implications according the generalization of the results provided by automatic emotion detection.