Amazon says its facial software can recognize fear

With Halloween just months away, Amazon’s timing seems perfect.

The tech company announced in a blog post this week that it’s facial recognition software — Rekognition — now has the ability to recognize fear.

Amazon Rekognition has “improved accuracy for emotion detection (for all 7 emotions: ‘Happy’, ‘Sad’, ‘Angry’, ‘Surprised’, ‘Disgusted’, ‘Calm’ and ‘Confused’) and added a new emotion: ‘Fear,’” the post says.

The Amazon Web Services product is used by developers can be used for face detection, analysis, and recognition features for image and video analysis. It generates metadata about detected faces — from gender to age to emotions. Some companies use the software for “pathing,” which tracks an object (like a golf ball) through a video frame.

But not everyone agrees that facial expressions are so predictable.

A recent study by psychologists concluded that “we know much less about emotional expressions and emotion perception than we thought we did. … Those of us who cultivate the science of emotion and the consumers who use this research should seriously question the assumptions of the common view and step back from what we think we know about reading emotions in faces.”