Human rights organizations ask Zoom not to include emotion tracking AI on the platform

The nonprofit Fight for the Future and 27 human rights organizations have sent a letter to teleconferencing platform Zoom requesting the company to terminate its potential plans to incorporate emotion recognition tools into their software. wrote an open letter.

‘Will discriminate’

After reports last month that Zoom was considering incorporating artificial intelligence into its virtual meeting software to detect and analyze people’s moods and emotions, human rights organizations said that the technology They announced that they had recently sent a joint letter to Eric Yuan, the CEO of the company, claiming that it was wrong and could threaten fundamental rights.

In the text shared by Fight for the Future: “This software is discriminatory, manipulative, potentially dangerous and is based on the assumption that all people use the same facial expressions, voice patterns and body language. It is inherently biased and, like physiognomy, is inherently racist and “Zoom’s use of this software gives credence to the so-called science of sentiment analysis that experts agree doesn’t work. Facial expressions can vary dramatically and are often disconnected from underlying emotions, so much so that even humans often can’t portray them properly.” statements were included.

Human rights organizations on emotion artificial intelligence, which they claim can cause abuse by companies and government agencies, are waiting for a public response from Zoom by May 20 and want the company to commit not to include these tools on the platform. Zoom has not yet made a statement on the subject.