Meta Patents AI Device That Tracks Your Emotions, Watches You Take Your Meds (404media.co) 52
An anonymous reader quotes a report from 404 Media: Meta has filed a patent for a system that records your voice and surroundings all day, then uses an AI to analyse your mood. The patent's stated, theoretical goal is for Meta, a company that makes billions of dollars targeting ads at its users based on their data, is to sell users a wearable that tailors workouts for them based on whether they're happy or sad. Patentlyze first noticed the patent which was published on July 2 after Meta filed it back in December of 2025. The filing described an "apparatus" that surveilled a user and their surroundings constantly to craft a better workout. "The audible communications may be associated with contextual factors such as time of day, location, user activity, or digital interaction," the patent said. "The audible communications may be transcribed, and an emotional-state machine learning model may interpret verbal and nonverbal cues to determine emotional indicators."
According to the filing, Meta needs to know when a user laughs or sighs, where they are physically, and what objects they're surrounded by. It would even like to know when you've taken your meds. "The AI assistant may listen to a user(s) at predefined times to hear various types of communication, such as sighs, laughter, and/or the tone(s) of a voice(s)," the patent said. "The AI assistant may use these inputs to quantify the user's emotional state or generate other insights about the user [...] in another example, the AI assistant may take multiple inputs in in addition to audio inputs (e.g., of a user's voice) to provide a summary of emotional trends based on various inputs (e.g., a happier emotional state associated with a particular time of day or at a time when medication is taken, etc.)." The more data it has, the patent explains, the better it could understand a user's moods. "The system increases the precision and reliability of emotional inference by aligning multimodal sensor inputs on synchronized timelines, which creates a novel data structure that supports richer emotional analysis," it said. "These combined features deliver a technical improvement in automated audio interpretation, enabling continuous emotional monitoring on everyday devices."
The emotional-analyzing AI would need far more than just a user's words to determine moods over time. A longer description of the hypothetical training data for the AI included "attributes of thousands of objects" such as a user's books, personal messages, and newspapers. "In some examples, audible communications may include speech (e.g., voice data), sighs, laughter, or other nonverbal sounds associated with an expression(s), an emotion(s), or ideas. In some examples, the audible communications may include the tone(s) of a voice of a user while making the communication(s)," it said. All this data, Meta says, would be in service of tailoring better workouts. Humans, the patent explained, are simply not as good as a machine for this. "Personal trainers cannot provide the level of precision in guidance, such as correcting a pose and/or body movement," it said. "These challenges create a need for a practical approach that uses a single device to observe movement, recommend routines, and provide corrective guidance." "Like other companies, patents at Meta are often filed to disclose concepts that may or may not be implemented, and a granted patent does not guarantee that Meta has pursued or will pursue the technology described," the company said in a statement.
According to the filing, Meta needs to know when a user laughs or sighs, where they are physically, and what objects they're surrounded by. It would even like to know when you've taken your meds. "The AI assistant may listen to a user(s) at predefined times to hear various types of communication, such as sighs, laughter, and/or the tone(s) of a voice(s)," the patent said. "The AI assistant may use these inputs to quantify the user's emotional state or generate other insights about the user [...] in another example, the AI assistant may take multiple inputs in in addition to audio inputs (e.g., of a user's voice) to provide a summary of emotional trends based on various inputs (e.g., a happier emotional state associated with a particular time of day or at a time when medication is taken, etc.)." The more data it has, the patent explains, the better it could understand a user's moods. "The system increases the precision and reliability of emotional inference by aligning multimodal sensor inputs on synchronized timelines, which creates a novel data structure that supports richer emotional analysis," it said. "These combined features deliver a technical improvement in automated audio interpretation, enabling continuous emotional monitoring on everyday devices."
The emotional-analyzing AI would need far more than just a user's words to determine moods over time. A longer description of the hypothetical training data for the AI included "attributes of thousands of objects" such as a user's books, personal messages, and newspapers. "In some examples, audible communications may include speech (e.g., voice data), sighs, laughter, or other nonverbal sounds associated with an expression(s), an emotion(s), or ideas. In some examples, the audible communications may include the tone(s) of a voice of a user while making the communication(s)," it said. All this data, Meta says, would be in service of tailoring better workouts. Humans, the patent explained, are simply not as good as a machine for this. "Personal trainers cannot provide the level of precision in guidance, such as correcting a pose and/or body movement," it said. "These challenges create a need for a practical approach that uses a single device to observe movement, recommend routines, and provide corrective guidance." "Like other companies, patents at Meta are often filed to disclose concepts that may or may not be implemented, and a granted patent does not guarantee that Meta has pursued or will pursue the technology described," the company said in a statement.
Great idea (Score:2)
A surveillance device that watches us 24/7 and is accountable only to Facebook, what could go wrong?
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what could go wrong?
We feed it false information. Pet rocks are coming back! Zuckerberg goes long on gravel pits.
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Feeding it false information would be a job requiring 100% of a persons time.
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It would require 2% of a person's time, and 100% of his bot's time.
From what I hear, a significant chunk of the data going up to Facebook today is already synthetic.
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A surveillance device that watches us 24/7 and is accountable only to Facebook
And anybody with a warrant or a subpoena.
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You need to go to court and convince a judge to get one of those.
Patented prior art (Score:4, Interesting)
Sounds like they just got a patent for a 90s-era PDA
Also... angry people... (Score:2)
Angry people are 53.218% more likely to buy a new mattress in the next six months since their anger is often caused by poor sleep. This will revolutionize personalized mattress sales.
Good News, Everyone! (Score:5, Funny)
It's a suppository.
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Sweet! I've always wanted a Robert's Toot Tone [youtu.be]!
Thank you Meta for patenting (Score:2)
another man-made horror beyond belief.
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There is positive potential here too.
Re: Thank you Meta for patenting (Score:1)
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I think that positive potential you mention might be overshadowed by the invasion of privacy this idea represents. The data collected will undoubtedly be sold to the highest bidders, as well as being used to deny or increase the cost of certain treatments, drugs, and/or insurance.
Now if the processing and the collected data can all be offline, local, and private, then I could get behind the idea.
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There is no technological solution for a system wherein the people running it have the goal of providing as little care as possible.
On the off-chance someone trying to do good comes up with something, it will either be shut down or co-opted, probably even before hitting the market.
Meta? (Score:3)
This stuck out " and their surroundings" everything from their porn glasses, making "your" photos public for use by others and things like this are creepy.
And Meta just keeps getting creepier.
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Yes. But the real problem is they still have plenty of customers.
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All else aside, every day we reveal to Zuckerberg that we prefer being known to privacy. What's he supposed to do with that? Why do we kee
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As a general rule, people are stupid and do not understand how things work. The only known to work mechanism is regulation, i.e. protecting the stupid against themselves. But that comes with other problems and must be carefully restricted to not devolve into even worse things.
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Regulation controls how people behave towards others.
I agree about the risks, it always has drawbacks and they may not be predictable.
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Yes. But the real problem is they still have plenty of customers.
You have an odd way of spelling "suckers". ;-)
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I should at least have put in quotes, obviously.
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They just can't help but be evil and invasive. This stuck out " and their surroundings" everything from their porn glasses, making "your" photos public for use by others and things like this are creepy. And Meta just keeps getting creepier.
To be fair, which I hate to be, this isn't a Meta specific problem. This is a tech industry wide trend. Data exists? They all seem to believe they absolutely have the right to that data. In fact, if they could, they would make it a crime for people to have data that they have not already uploaded to the tech conglomerate. It's greed driven psychosis manifesting in digital form because the decision makers in the tech industry can not find enough resources in the real world to satisfy the tremendous gaping ma
Privacy (Score:2)
Privacy has been under attack for decades now, and the attacks just don't stop. At this rate we might as well throw it out and make it so that if our privacy is for sale, then we better be getting compensated for it. If my activities are for sale then I better be getting a cut!
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Privacy? (Score:2)
We traded our privacy for services, and then we used them in ways that suggest we never cared about our privacy in the first place. Imagine yourself as an outside observer watching people post pictures of everything they eat and everywhere they go. Would you see that and think people cared about privacy?
It's a conundrum. We insist we care about our privacy, then discard it a
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Privacy has been under attack for decades now, and the attacks just don't stop. At this rate we might as well throw it out and make it so that if our privacy is for sale, then we better be getting compensated for it. If my activities are for sale then I better be getting a cut!
Read the book "Earth" by David Brin. Most of society within the future described in that book believe privacy is a quaint and ancient concept, with no place in the modern world. Those who believe privacy should exist are fringe outcasts, believed by most to be unhinged in some manner. In some ways, that book is pretty prophetic, if you remove the woo-woo and aliens.
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So, a better question might be, "has the compensation been sufficient?".
You better watch out (Score:1)
You better not cry
You better not pout
I'm telling you why
Zuckerberg is coming to town.
Title Correction: (Score:2)
Meta Patents AI Device That Tracks Your Emotions, Watches You Take Your Meds
"Privacy Rapist Patents AI Device That Tracks Your Emotions, Stalks You Take Your Meds"
There FTFY.
If you have one of these devices at home... (Score:2)
...place close to it a receiver tuned to WWV [nist.gov].
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A loop of "Never Gonna Give You Up"
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A loop of "Never Gonna Give You Up"
Great idea! I'd love to Rickroll Zuck into an early grave!
The World According to Zuck (Score:2)
Patent filings are meaningless (Score:2)
All of the big tech companies incentivize their employees to write up as many patent ideas as possible, and anything that looks remotely plausible gets filed by their patent attorneys. This in no way means the company has any plans to build the thing patented.
Why do they do it then? To build up their "patent warchest". Every company knows that they're going to get sued for patent infringement, because it's just impossible not to. Hamstringing your engineers by having patent attorneys scrutinize everyt
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THX 1138 (Score:2)
So George Orwell's "1984" was overly optimistic? (Score:1)
So George Orwell's "1984" was overly optimistic?
This is not good.
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Sounds more like Equilibrium [themoviedb.org].
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Everything sounds like "Equilibrium" because there's not a millisecond of originality in that movie.
THX 1138 (Score:2)
Finally we can have the future we always wanted.
No Batteries (Score:2)
We had mood rings in the 80's - no need for batteries. Anyone in your proximity could see whether you were red or green. Of course, you had to also wear a decoder ring (no batteries) to decode the colors. And if you were color blind, you needed a friend (again, no batteries) to tell you the color. If the color was black, the wearer had messed up their medication and was dead.
The Apparatus (Score:2)
Introducing... (Score:1)