Spies in your smart home?
What are Smart Home devices good for?
- Automate routine tasks: lighting, blinds, feeding pets, vacuuming, etc.
- Voice control: replaces light switches, remotes, etc.
- Security: see who rings the door, even when you are not home
- Energy efficiency: turn heating on/off remotely
How does emotion detection work?
- 7 universal emotions: happiness, sadness, surprise, fear, disgust, anger, neutral
- An AI model (more precisely: a neural network) is trained with many images of facial expressions…
- ...and then predicts for new images which emotion is expressed in the face
- More precisely: for each emotion, the model computes a probability for how certain the model is of having detected this emotion
- The model predicts the emotion with the highest probability
How can emotion detection be misused?
- Advertising that exploits the current emotional state
- Recommended content can be adapted to emotions - or can try to manipulate emotions without the user's knowledge
- Emotions can be exploited to generate trust, capture attention, or make false information appear plausible
Am I affected?
- Emotion detection works on many types of data: video, voice, text, behavioral features (gestures, hand writing, gait), physiological features (heart/breathing rate, eye tracking)
- Many smart devices - smart home, fitness tracker, IoT, etc. - can collect data with which emotion detection is possible
- We cannot say with certainty which devices actually do this in practice!
How can I protect myself?
- Be aware how the devices work and what their risks are
- Research before you buy: product tests, privacy policies
- Prefer well-known Swiss/European manufacturers
- Close camera shutters, turn off microphones
- Prefer free and open source alternatives and devices without cloud:
- Inform your guests at home that smart devices might collect image or voice data