Ideas worth spreading

This app knows how you feel -- from the look on your face

1,771,966 views | Rana el Kaliouby • TEDWomen 2015

Our emotions influence every aspect of our lives -- how we learn, how we communicate, how we make decisions. Yet they're absent from our digital lives; the devices and apps we interact with have no way of knowing how we feel. Scientist Rana el Kaliouby aims to change that. She demos a powerful new technology that reads your facial expressions and matches them to corresponding emotions. This "emotion engine" has big implications, she says, and could change not just how we interact with machines -- but with each other.

Our emotions influence every aspect of our lives -- how we learn, how we communicate, how we make decisions. Yet they're absent from our digital lives; the devices and apps we interact with have no way of knowing how we feel. Scientist Rana el Kaliouby aims to change that. She demos a powerful new technology that reads your facial expressions and matches them to corresponding emotions. This "emotion engine" has big implications, she says, and could change not just how we interact with machines -- but with each other.

This talk was presented at an official TED conference. TED's editors chose to feature it for you.

Integrate emotion analytics into your own app.

About the speaker

Rana el Kaliouby

Rana el Kaliouby

Computer scientist

See speaker profile

What if a computer could recognize your facial expression, and react to how you feel? Rana el Kaliouby sees big possibilities in making technology emotionally aware.

Rosalind W. Picard | The MIT Press, 1997 | Book

Affective Computing

This book introduces the notion of computers that have the ability to recognize, understand and express emotions. It coined the term “affective computing” and is what inspired me and many others around the world to get into the space of emotion-aware computers.

Raffi Khatchadourian | The New Yorker, January 19, 2015 | Article

We Know How You Feel

This is a great overview of the history of affective computing and its current applications in business and future directions.

Charles Darwin | CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2012 | Book

The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals

This is a seminal work.

Paul Ekman and Erika L. Rosenberg | Oxford University Press, 2005 | Book

What the Face Reveals

This is an essential reference for all those working in the area of facial analysis and expression. This was the first book I read on facial expressions and is one in a series of Paul Ekman’s groundbreaking works that have been foundational to a lot of what we do today.

Simon Baron-Cohen | A Bradford Book, 1997 | Book

Mindblindness

This is a must-read on how we mind-read, effortlessly, automatically and mostly unconsciously, all the time. Simon explains how individuals on the autism spectrum are “mind blind; his work and book inspired my research for building emotion-sensing wearable glasses that help individuals on the autism spectrum read and respond to emotions.

Anthony Damasio | Penguin Books, 2005 | Book

Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain

This book argues that emotions are not a luxury — they are essential to rational thinking and to successful social interactions both in our personal and professional lives. It is a must-read for background and seminal research on why emotions matter.

TEDWomen 2010 | Watch

Cynthia Breazeal: The rise of personal robots

This talk lays a vision for personal robots and how they will transform the way we learn, work and play. Cynthia and I first met at MIT Media Lab. I have always admired her work in social robotics and am a big fan of what she's doing at Jibo today. There is also a lot of synergies between our work — social robots need to have emotion-sensing capabilities to effectively build rapport with a human owner!

Warner Bros., 2013 | Explore

Her

This film takes the idea of an emotionally intelligent device to the extreme! What I find fascinating is how, because this operating system is emotionally intelligent, it persuades its user to do all sorts of things.

This talk was presented at an official TED conference. TED's editors chose to feature it for you.

Integrate emotion analytics into your own app.