Emotional AI, soft biometrics and the surveillance of emotional life: An unusual consensus on privacy

TLDR

Emotional AI is rapidly integrated into everyday devices and environments, with developers asserting it does not identify users while stakeholders seek to regulate its influence on emotional experiences. The study investigates the privacy implications of non‑identifying emotional AI. The authors conducted over 100 industry, legal, policy, regulator, and NGO interviews, a stakeholder workshop to draft ethical codes, and a UK survey of 2,068 citizens about emotion‑capture technologies. Stakeholders show only a weak consensus on privacy needs, suggesting a narrow opportunity to establish societal principles for using emotional data.

Abstract

By the early 2020s, emotional artificial intelligence (emotional AI) will become increasingly present in everyday objects and practices such as assistants, cars, games, mobile phones, wearables, toys, marketing, insurance, policing, education and border controls. There is also keen interest in using these technologies to regulate and optimize the emotional experiences of spaces, such as workplaces, hospitals, prisons, classrooms, travel infrastructures, restaurants, retail and chain stores. Developers frequently claim that their applications do not identify people. Taking the claim at face value, this paper asks, what are the privacy implications of emotional AI practices that do not identify individuals? To investigate privacy perspectives on soft non-identifying emotional AI, the paper draws upon the following: over 100 interviews with the emotion detection industry, legal community, policy-makers, regulators and NGOs interested in privacy; a workshop with stakeholders to design ethical codes for using data about emotions; a UK survey of 2068 citizens on feelings about emotion capture technologies. It finds a weak consensus among social stakeholders on the need for privacy, this driven by different interests and motivations. Given this weak consensus, it concludes that there exists a limited window of opportunity to societally agree principles of practice regarding privacy and the use of data about emotions.