A handful of companies are developing algorithms that can read the human emotions behind nuanced and fleeting facial expressions to maximize advertising and market research campaigns.

They’ve all developed the ability to identify emotions by taking massive data sets — videos of people reacting to content — and putting them through machine learning systems.

[W]ith the ability to capture, in video freeze-frame, fleeting expressions that are too quick for a human to definitively identify, the algorithms may already be smart enough to provide more information on what people are thinking than has ever before been available.

[T]he presence of a webcam on nearly every laptop and mobile device has propelled this use of artificial intelligence. Not all of those webcams provide an image clear enough for the algorithms to decode, but the companies are betting on continued improvements.

Advertising isn’t the only potential (and creepy) use of this; imagine this technology being used for police interrogations, job interviews, loan applications and court proceedings.

Via Singularity Hub.