Microsoft’s ‘Smart Mirror’ Can Read Your Emotions

Microsoft’s Magic Mirror – Hidden Facial Recognition Camera

The message from the Magic Mirror of Microsoft, `You can be smart and good-looking, a so-called smart mirror which tends to distinguish and welcome users, read their emotions as well display the weather, time, together with other information. The mirror seems to look like a regular mirror. Izzat Khair, a member of developer experience team of Microsoft Singapore explained - `imagine when you wake up in the morning, you are able to use the mirror to style your hair, do your make up and while at the same time, you can also view the weather’.

The Magic Mirror tends to have hidden facial-recognition camera which has the capability of sensing eight human emotions, comprising of anger, happiness and surprise. Microsoft intends to extend the features of the mirror enabling it to show app-fed news together with Facebook and Twitter feed in a display section.

 Khair has mentioned that the mirror is yet in its demo stage though has real business prospective and pointed out that the advertising as well as marketing industries for instance, could make use of the technology. He added saying `imagine on the monitor of the mirror you are able to play an advertisement. You have a camera which can snap a photo of the users, viewing the advertisement.

Real-Time Information to Advertisers

He also added that the facial recognition features of the mirror can provide real-time information to advertisers regarding the reaction of the viewers to the advertisement. Among the various tech products, the cutting-edge technology, the Magic Mirror had been on display at InnovFest UnBound 2016, a digital technology conference, in Singapore, showing the changing ways; users were cooperating with the technology.

 Singapore’s Minister for Foreign Affairs, Vivian Balakrishnan, in an address at InnovFest recently stated that he wanted the country to build an operating system database for 100 million smart objects for the next five years, when the Internet of Things trends took off. Microsoft is said to be working with the government agencies of Singapore on enhancing the city-state’s IoT ecosystem and on talent development, cyber security, research and public sector partnership as part of the country’s Smart Nation enterprise.

Data Stored on Private Cloud

Keeping the focus on cyber security, Khair has mentioned that the data administered by the mirror had been stored on a private cloud which the programmers of Microsoft could not access and the data is said to be deleted after a period of seven days. It is said to be a one-way mirror which is made smart with a 23.6-inch LCD lit screen sitting behind it that tends to show white UI components on a black background.

 Users can see their reflection as well as the white component in the mirror, when the display is powered on. The Magic Mirror tends to use Windows Hello technology for the purpose of facial recognition and Raspberry Pi seems to power the device. Microsoft had mentioned in a blog post that `to power the mirror, they have chosen a Raspberry Pi due to its popularity, support, price point together with the specifications of hardware.