News on Emotional AI Lab

Andrew McStay awarded IEEE Standards Association Standards Medallion

Wed, 21 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Professor Andrew (Andy) McStay, Director of the Emotional AI Lab, has been awarded the IEEE Standards Association Standards Medallion. The award recognises his leadership in standardising emulated empathy in AI, and its citation covers foundational scholarship, regulatory engagement and public education.

The Medallion is IEEE SA’s award for major contributions to standards development. Only a handful are given each year, and recipients usually come from engineering fields such as Ethernet, power systems and robotics. This year’s award reflects a growing recognition that AI systems which simulate emotion and empathy need technical standards of their own.

Canada’s new Children’s Privacy Code addresses emotional analytics

Wed, 21 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada (OPC) has published its Children’s Privacy Code. The code includes a section on emotional analytics, listed under prohibited practices. It says organisations must not use children’s personal information to infer emotional states or vulnerabilities in order to exploit them.

This is an issue we examined in The Machine-Readable Child: Governance of Emotional AI Used with Canadian Children. Andrew McStay and Gilad Rosner (Internet of Things Privacy Forum) wrote that report for the OPC’s Contributions Program in 2025. It found that Canadian privacy law lacked specific protections for children’s emotion data and recommended changes to address this.

IEEE 7014.1-2026 published: ethical standard for empathic AI partners

Tue, 30 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

IEEE has published IEEE 7014.1-2026, the IEEE Recommended Practice for Ethical Considerations of Emulated Empathy in Partner-Based General-Purpose Artificial Intelligence Systems. The standard was developed by a working group chaired by Professor Andrew McStay, Director of the Emotional AI Lab.

What it covers

General-purpose AI is now routinely packaged as a partner: companions, personal AI, co-pilots, assistants and agents. Many of these systems are designed to appear to understand and care about the people using them. IEEE 7014.1 is the first standard to address the ethics of this overlap between general-purpose AI, emulated empathy and human-AI partnering. It extends IEEE 7014-2024, which set out broader principles for emulated empathy across AI.

Lab gives evidence to APPG on Children’s Online Safety

Mon, 29 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

On 30 June 2026, Professor Andrew McStay gave evidence in the Houses of Parliament to the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Children’s Online Safety. The session was the final one in the APPG’s inquiry into AI and children’s online safety, and it focused on AI regulation.

Andy appeared alongside Rachel Beggs of the ICO, Almudena Lara and Andrew Breeze of Ofcom, and Professor Lorna Woods OBE, expert adviser to the Online Safety Act Network. The questioning was led by the APPG’s Chair, John Whitby MP.

Lab gives evidence to APPG on Artificial Intelligence

Mon, 15 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

On 15 June 2026, Professor Andrew McStay gave oral evidence in the House of Lords to the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Artificial Intelligence. The session, Youth Perspectives on AI: Experiences and Vision for AI, asked how young people can have a real say in how AI is developed and deployed, given that they will live longest with the futures it shapes.

The session was co-chaired by Dr Allison Gardner MP and Lord Clement-Jones CBE. Andy spoke alongside:

AI Propaganda Isn't Just a Content Problem. It's an Emotional Infrastructure Problem

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

You’ve probably seen it without recognising it. An AI-generated rapper dropping bars about immigration and cultural decline. A Lego-style animation mocking world leaders. A meme that feels weirdly funny and unsettling at the same time. This is slopaganda — AI-generated propaganda designed to manipulate beliefs and feelings at speed and scale — and it is spreading fast.

A new piece from the Media Diversity Institute features Professor Vian Bakir (Bangor University) on exactly this phenomenon. The MDI article traces how slopaganda is being used to target marginalised groups, simulate false consensus, and flood information environments with emotionally charged content that is cheap to produce, easy to share, and hard to counter.

Weaponised Empathy: new report on AI scams and the Nigeria–UK response

Tue, 28 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The Emotional AI Lab has published Weaponised Empathy: AI Scams & the Nigeria–UK Response, by Vian Bakir, Andy McStay and Chiemezie Ugochukwu.

The report is the outcome of a three-month research sprint. It examines how AI is acting as a force multiplier for scams run from Nigeria against victims in the UK and beyond. A particular focus is “empathic” AI: chatbots, voice cloning and deepfakes that can simulate care, sustain emotionally convincing relationships indefinitely, and remove the human tells that once gave scammers away.

Andrew McStay speaks on the confidentiality of human-machine communication at Privacy Symposium, Venice

Sun, 26 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

On 20 April 2026, Professor Andrew McStay spoke at the Privacy Symposium 2026 in Venice, on a panel titled The Confidentiality of Human-Machine Communication.

Billions of people now talk to large language models and virtual assistants every day, which makes human-machine communication an ordinary part of daily life. The interdisciplinary panel asked what that means for privacy:

Should these conversations be confidential, and if so, why?
What should count when judging their privacy implications?
Does existing law, such as the ePrivacy Directive, already protect them?

Chaired by Andreas Häuselmann, the panel also included Anna Leschanowsky. It covered self-disclosure, simulated authenticity, anthropomorphism and empirical research on users’ privacy concerns.

Emotional AI Lab convenes AI scams policy workshop in Abuja

Wed, 25 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

On 27 February 2026, the Emotional AI Lab held a multi-sector policy workshop in Abuja, Nigeria, on AI-enabled scams and how Nigeria and the UK might respond.

The workshop brought together representatives from:

the National Centre for Artificial Intelligence and Robotics
NITDA
the Federal Ministry of Justice’s Cybercrime Unit
the Nigeria Police Force’s National Cybercrime Centre
the Nigerian Bar Association
the National Data Protection Commission
the Nigerian Communications Commission
the Cyber Security Experts Association of Nigeria
the African Council for Communication Education
young techpreneurs
the University of Abuja
Bangor University

Discussion ranged from deepfakes, voice cloning and AI chatbots that can sustain emotionally convincing scams at scale, to legal and enforcement gaps, digital literacy, and the economic pressures that draw young people into scam economies. A clear message emerged: AI is amplifying long-standing scam cultures rather than creating them, and enforcement alone won’t break the cycle. Participants called for a joined-up response spanning law, education, platforms and, crucially, legitimate digital opportunities for Nigeria’s young, tech-skilled population.

Do AI companions understand? Most UK teens say yes

Fri, 02 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The Emotional AI Lab has published Do AI Companions Understand? Most UK Teens Say Yes, by Andy McStay and Vian Bakir. Funded by Responsible AI UK, the report draws on a nationally representative survey of 1,009 UK teenagers aged 13 to 18 who use AI companions.

Most teen companion use happens on mainstream AI rather than dedicated companion apps. ChatGPT was used by 78% of respondents, ahead of Google Gemini (32%), Copilot (22%) and Character.ai (17%). Almost a third (31%) interact with AI companions on most days. Seeking advice is the top reason for use, alongside entertainment, curiosity, constant availability and not being judged.

Automating Empathy short film wins Best Sound Design at Portugal Indie Film Festival

Thu, 30 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Automating Empathy, a short film based on the work of the Emotional AI Lab, has won Best Sound Design at the Portugal Indie Film Festival 2025.

The film was written and narrated by Ben Bland, with Professor Andy McStay as academic advisor and co-producer. It takes its title from Andy’s book Automating Empathy (Oxford University Press, 2024) and brings the questions raised by AI that reads and simulates human emotion to a wider audience through film rather than text.

The Truth about AI - The Royal Institution's Christmas Lectures 2023

Wed, 20 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Just before Christmas, Vian Bakir recorded a disinformation and AI section for The Royal Institution’s Christmas Lectures on The Truth about AI, in conversation with University of Oxford’s Prof. Mike Woolridge, livecast with a studio audience of teenagers. With 2024 set to be the year of elections worldwide (a lot are happening), she was asked to reflect on what she saw as the key issue with disinformation, AI and politics. Below she provides some reflections on this.

New open access book: 'Automating Empathy Decoding Technologies that Gauge Intimate Life'

Sat, 16 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Finally! Three years plus in the writing, it’s here, McStay’s Automating Empathy, now out with Oxford University Press.Available in hardback and paperback from all good bookshops and online sellers, it’s also open access here. You’re welcome!

Click the open access link for the table of content (and download and read at leisure). The overall motive is to consider the pros and many cons of applications that claim in some way to be empathetic, or to interact with human emotion. It builds on work introduced in McStay’s Emotional AI to consider the implications of a technological environment that pertains to ‘feel-into’ into its inhabitants.

New project with Responsible AI UK: hello AEGIS

Sat, 16 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000

The lab applied and has been successful in their application to the Responsible AI UK Impact Accelerator for their project, ‘Automated Empathy – Globalising International Standards (AEGIS): Japan and Ethically Aligned Regions’.

Partnering with Japan’s National Institute of Informatics, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), and engaging the Information Commissioner’s Office (UK), this project augments our UK-Japan social science efforts to create soft governance of autonomous systems that interact with human emotions and/or emulate empathy.

New Book! Optimising Emotions, Incubating Falsehoods

Tue, 31 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Manipulating fellow-feeling

We are now, sadly, getting used to the hijacking of collective emotions for unethical and undemocratic ends. January 8th 2023 saw the unscrupulous manipulation of fellow-feeling in the Brazilian presidential election, with pro-Bolsonaro supporters provoked into attempting an insurrection. This, in turn, was a replay of events in the last US presidential election, where President Donald Trump propagated false claims of rigged elections, undermining trust in the democratic system.

Not confined to politics, emotional, but false, claims about all sorts of issues affecting the civic body now flow freely through global media systems, especially social media platforms. As the bandwidth for emotion capture expands with the introduction of biometric emotion recognition systems across many walks of life across the world, the potential for emotional manipulation based on falsehoods is, likewise, vast.

Contribution to open access book (5RightsFoundation and the Digital Futures Commission)

Tue, 22 Nov 2022 00:00:00 +0000

The 5RightsFoundation and the Digital Futures Commission have assembled this brilliant open access book, written by authors from academia, industry and policy. With contribution from us, we assess the automation of empathy in education, policy implications, and the role of the UNCRC’s General Comment 25. We conclude that while there is exciting scope for new technologies education (especially of the mixed reality sort), any labelling or processing of data about child emotion should be prohibited, irrespective of whether a child’s data is legally “personal” or not.

UK Parliament still wants to know how to address false information online. We say, dial down emotional contagion!

Fri, 14 Oct 2022 00:00:00 +0000

False information continues to proliferate online, despite years of multi-stakeholder efforts to quell it. In September 2022, we were invited by the UK Parliament’s Online Harms and Disinformation Sub-Committee (part of the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee) to provide evidence to their Inquiry into Misinformation and Trusted Voices.

We addressed one of the Inquiry’s questions: namely: Is the provision of authoritative information responsive enough to meet the challenge of misinformation that is spread on social media?

Wicked problems: Vian Bakir gives keynote for pan-Wales AI network/The Alan Turing Institute

Fri, 14 Oct 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Across 2022, Andrew McStay (Prof. of Digital Life, Bangor Univ.) has been co-organising a pan-Wales AI network, as part of the growth of The Alan Turing Institute. Vian Bakir (Prof. of Journalism & PolComms, Bangor Univ.) recently addressed this interdisciplinary network with a keynote on ‘The Role of the Humanities and Social Sciences in AI Policymaking: a personal journey of twists and turns in the service of solving ‘Wicked Problems’.

Statement about Microsoft's new "Responsible AI Standard"

Thu, 23 Jun 2022 00:00:00 +0000

We’ve had a lot of requests for comment on Microsoft’s new “Responsible AI Standard”, especially as it was framed in the NYT article that followed its announcement. Why? Because Microsoft stated they are retiring capabilities that infer emotional states and identity attributes such as gender, age, smile, facial hair, hair, and makeup.

The Lab at the 9th biennial Surveillance & Society 2022 conference

Mon, 06 Jun 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Friday afternoon saw members of the Lab present work at the 2022 Surveillance & Society conference. Andrew McStay provided an overview of the UK-Japan work, highlighting the speed of take-up by large corporations, diversity of applications, and key concerns. Peter Mantello presented work from the Japan side of the project on emotional AI in the workplace, noting attitudinal differences between the West and Japan in relation to dislike of being managed by algorithms. Diana Miranda then provided insight on the policing dimension of the project, opening by noting that the UK’s College of Policing report ‘Policing in England and Wales Future Operating Environment 2040’ sees that emotional AI will become more prominent. She finds however that officers are more skeptical, questioning methods and efficacy. Vian Bakir attended to social media and emotional AI in the here and now, discussing workshop work (with Alex Laffer) that made use of interactive storytelling to ground understanding of complex technologies (the Twine method). Lachlan Urquhart finally provided the legal backdrop assessing the draft EU AI Act and its many points of application to emotional AI.

AI Ethics for Public Services in Wales

Wed, 27 Apr 2022 00:00:00 +0000

The first quarter of 2022 saw Prof. Andrew McStay and Dr. Gilad Rosner (IoT Privacy Forum) team up again to consider digital ethics in context of government and public services in Wales. Funded by the 2022 Welsh Data Nation Accelerator (WDNA) programme and through engagement with Welsh Government they developed:

A primer on ethics and digital ethics
Understanding of digital well-being’ as a useful framing for Wales
Analysis of the norms and values of the Well-being for Future Generations Act in context of the UN sustainability development goals and the Precautionary Principle
Distillation of those norms and values into technology governance imperatives
Practical activities to maximise national well-being goals
A review of a survey of nationally segmented British attitudes toward government use of technology and personal data
A set of resources to further explore digital ethics and well-being

Although they started by distilling and analysing key ethical frameworks from the around the world they quickly worked out that key normative drivers for Welsh AI ethics were far closer to home, in the form of the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015. Those outside of Wales are unlikely to be familiar with it, but it is unique in being a highly moral piece of legislation that builds for the future. Oddly there is no mention of data or technology, which provided the team opportunity to build what the saw as the missing piece of the Act.

Emotional AI Lab on 'The Critical Technology Podcast'

Tue, 15 Feb 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Andrew McStay of the Lab joined Dr. Sara Grimes (Director of the KMDI, and expert on digital play) to talk about the ethics and impacts of AI technologies designed to read and respond to our emotions, and their growing presence in children’s lives.

They covered a lot of ground in the podcast (direct link to episode on Spotify here) including smart toys, virtual assistants, and machine learning apps spread across homes and schools, and how an increasing number of children are now living, learning, and growing up around artificial intelligence or “AI”. Pros, cons, and what to do about this, all covered!

New paper: AI Act, cars, emotion, fatigue, attention, ethics

Thu, 03 Feb 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Fair to say that many applications of systems that pertain to profile and engage with affect and emotion will not come to pass. Others are different, receiving not only financial investment but policy investment. Use of cameras and sensors in private transport to gauge fatigue, attention and emotion is perhaps the prime example of this.

Against the backdrop of the European Union’s proposed AI Act, Andrew McStay and Lachlan Urquhart consider: (1) European road safety policy that seeks to vastly reduce road deaths using computational surveillance; (2) interest in the role of safety solutions based on in-cabin sensing of emotion and affective states of drivers and passengers and (3) wider autonomous driving trends that are changing the nature of interactions between vehicle and driver.

Developing AI Ethics and Governance for Wales

Thu, 27 Jan 2022 00:00:00 +0000

With funding from Welsh Government, our goal is to establish what good AI ethics and governance is for Wales. This means answering how to get the best from AI technologies and simultaneously mitigate harms, risks and violation of rights. With Andrew McStay and Gilad Rosner teaming again, they will assess (1) the quickly growing number of AI guidance & governance documents; (2) academic scholarship; (3) output from technical bodies (e.g., IEEE and the P7000 series); (4) Welsh citizen perspectives; (5) industry & public sector views.

Making Emotional AI familiar: a narrative approach for researching citizen perspectives online

Thu, 13 Jan 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Alexander Laffer

As part of the Emotional AI in Cities project, I was tasked with designing and running workshops to collect citizen perspectives on living well with Emotional AI. This raised a number of issues, largely due to participants unfamiliarity with the emergent technology and the broad range and variation in emotional AI use. (You can get a fuller description of Emotional AI here.)

To overcome these issues, an innovative narrative approach was designed. Workshop participants were taken through a piece of interactive fiction which introduced them to emotional AI in domesticated (Auger, 2013) forms that rendered it familiar, even mundane. This approach encouraged participants to consider the impact emotional AI might have on their lives and practices, rather than focussing on the underlying technology.

UN Human Rights Council adoption of 'Right to privacy in the digital age': Emotion recognition technologies acknowledged

Mon, 25 Oct 2021 00:00:00 +0000

The United Nations (UN) Human Rights Council has acknowledged emotion recognition technologies as an emergent priority in the global right to privacy in the digital age.

With the proposed AI Act and GC25 of the UNCRC also acknowledging it, the policy landscape is changing quickly.

Emotion Recognition Technologies

Biometric and emotion data refer to intimate dimensions of human life. They provide cues about mental states and about the body itself. Emotion recognition technologies have attracted many criticisms (for instance about unproven methodologies), but this is not preventing their deployment worldwide in everyday objects, services, and situations. Indeed, there is a rapidly emerging global market for data about emotions, with emotion recognition now of keen interest to the technology industry, and the diverse sectors that perceive economic value in understanding emotional and mental states.

New paper time: 'Emotional AI, Ethics, and Japanese Spice'

Wed, 20 Oct 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Our UK-Japan project is assessing what it means to live well with emotional AI. This involves the question of what ‘living well’ means in both Japan and the UK. This paper argues that there are lessons of global value for AI ethics for Japan, and the world, to be found from examining leading Japanese philosophers of modernity and ethics (Yukichi Fukuzawa, Nishida Kitaro, Nishi Amane, and Watsuji Tetsurō), each of whom engaged closely with Western philosophical traditions.

Emotional Disinformation on Social Media – Advising Australia’s Electoral Matters Committee

Mon, 20 Sep 2021 00:00:00 +0000

In August 2020, Vian Bakir and Andrew McStay were invited to submit evidence to the Inquiry into the Impact of Social Media on Elections & Electoral Administration, conducted by the Electoral Matters Committee, Parliament of Victoria, Australia. (This followed their submissions across 2017-19 to the globally influential Inquiry into Fake News and Disinformation, conducted by the UK’s Culture, Media and Sport Committee.)

The Electoral Matters Committee wanted to know how online political advertising was changing elections; and what should be done about any negative impacts in the short-term and long-term in Australia. This year-long Inquiry held 7 days of hearings and attracted 126 submissions from global experts and key actors.

Hostile Discourse in AI Governing Philosophies: Permissionless Innovation vs. Precautionary Principle

Fri, 06 Aug 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Hostility towards regulatory precaution is embedding itself within high levels of AI technology policymaking in the USA and the UK. Policymaking in some quarters is hijacking language to present precaution in the field of technology as tantamount to luddism, in order to advance a specific neoliberal and libertarian agenda.

Gilad Rosner (IoT Privacy Forum) and Vian Bakir (Bangor University) were funded by the EPSRC’s Human-Data Interaction network to consider governing philosophies in AI policymaking. Their White Paper focused on the Precautionary Principle (which considers the potential of future harms, and takes anticipatory action before full certainty is achieved) and its antithesis, ‘Permissionless Innovation’ (which presents government regulation as the enemy of innovation).

IEEE guest lecture now online

Fri, 06 Aug 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Recorded in May 2021, this SSIT Guest Lecture was presented by Prof. Andrew McStay, Bangor University, UK at a Joint Chapter Meeting organised by IEEE UK and Ireland SSIT Chapter and co-hosted by IEEE Pittsburgh SSIT Chapter, Washington DC/Northern Virginia/Baltimore SSIT Chapter, Vancouver Section Joint Chapter and SSIT IST-Africa SIGHT on 27 May 2021.

Video here.

Lab interview with Washington Post: AI and China's lonely hearts

Fri, 06 Aug 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Andrew McStay was interviewed by the Washington Post Globe and Mail exploring love, AI, Replika, and synthetic personalities. He said:

“With weakened bonds between people, it makes sense that people would seek gratification from systems that are able to simulate intimacy.”

Article here.

Lab interview for Globe and Mail (NuraLogix, public surveillance tools and the Chinese government)

Fri, 07 May 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Andrew McStay was interviewed by Canada’s Globe and Mail exploring sale of biometric surveillance tools. He said:

“You cannot gauge whether a person is happy or sad by looking at their face – you cannot infer what a person is really feeling, or which emotion they are going through, it just does not work.”

For Prof. McStay, the use of emotional recognition in China raises deep ethical and privacy concerns.

Affective Politics of Digital Media panel (video)

Tue, 04 May 2021 00:00:00 +0000

To launch the book, Affective Politics, the book’s indomitable editors, Megan Boler and Elizabeth Davis, organised a panel launch, featuring Vian Bakir and Andrew McStay (among all other chapter authors).

Emotional AI & the Optimization of Disinformation

Tue, 20 Apr 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Thanks to Megan Boler for organising an international book launch of her edited book,Affective Politics of Digital Media.

Our chapter, ‘Empathic Media, Emotional AI, and the Optimization of Disinformation’, reflects upon the intersections between disinformation and the use of Emotional AI systems that claim to read, judge and react to emotions, affects and other subjective states, through text, voice, computer vision and biometric sensing.

A Brief Sociological History of Emotions

Emotional AI Lab in the Telegraph (UK news)

Tue, 16 Mar 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Andrew McStay was interviewed for a Telegraph article that explored ‘tyranny in the woke workplace.’ A rhetorical device for sure, to hook politically conservative readers, it’s a good article that investigates biometrics and tone policing at work. Article here.

Worth noting too that the Lab routinely finds that older folk (that the Telegraph appeals to) really do not like the idea of any profiling of emotion and bodily behaviour. Concern about the social impact of these technologies is an issue that cuts across age groups and the political matrix.

Hello Automated Empathy (IEEE blog piece and a useful primer for the project)

Tue, 16 Mar 2021 00:00:00 +0000

A short piece for IEEE’s Technology and Society publication. Considering how human behavioural profiling is increasingly based on bodies and subjective experience , this is useful primer for anyone seeking to understand ethical issues associated with emotional AI and automated empathy.

New article time! Children, Toys, Parents and Emotional AI

Tue, 16 Mar 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Part of ongoing Lab work on children and emotional AI, Andrew McStay and Gilad Rosner teamed to consider the social acceptability and governance of emotional AI in children’s toys and other child-oriented devices. Open access paper here, published with Big Data & Society.

This entailed expert interviews and survey work, finding generational unfairness to be the key theme of the interview stage. They followed interviews with a UK-wide national survey of parental attitudes towards “emotoys.” This explored the acceptability of emotoys and use of emotional AI in child-focused technologies, and by what terms use of these intimate technologies in toys should be governed. It revealed ambivalent attitudes and, when interpreted in context of literature on technology, ethics and parenting, highlights a need to protect parents as well as children.

Student attitudes towards ethics and AI in Japan (new paper)

Tue, 16 Mar 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Published with AI & Society, Nader Ghotbi, Peter Mantello and Tung Manh Ho examined the attitude and moral perception of 228 college students (63 Japanese and 165 non-Japanese) towards artificial intelligence (AI) in an international university in Japan. Paper here.

The students were asked to select a single most significant ethical issue associated with AI in the future from a list of nine ethical issues suggested by the World Economic Forum, and to explain why they believed that their chosen issues were most important. The majority of students (n=149, 65%) chose unemployment as the major ethical issue related to AI. The second largest group of students (n=29, 13%) were concerned with ethical issues related to emotional AI, including the impact of AI on human behaviour and emotion. The paper discusses the results in detail and concludes that, while policymakers must consider how to ameliorate the impact of AI on employment, AI engineers need to consider the emotional aspects of AI in research and development, as well.

Emotional AI Lab gives lectures for Global Campus on Human Rights.

Fri, 19 Feb 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Prof. Andrew McStay of the Emotional AI Lab contributed sessions to a course ‘Children’s Rights and Technology in the Digital Age’ for the Global Campus on Human Rights. Fellow lecturers include Edward Snowden, President of the Freedom of the Press Foundation and Right Livelihood Laureate; Joe Cannataci, UN Special Rapporteur on the right to privacy; Mary Jo Madda, Google; Emma Day, Human Rights Lawyer and Child Protection Consultant; Marianne Díaz Hernández, human rights activist and policy analyst for Derechos Digitales; Neha Gauchan, Program Officer of ChildSafeNet Nepal; Bertalan Meskó, Director, The Medical Futurist Institute, among brilliant others. Andrew gave two sessions, one on the role of emotional AI in education, and another on AI, emotion and toys.

CPDP 2021 Emotional AI and Smart Cities (Japan & UK) video

Fri, 12 Feb 2021 00:00:00 +0000

The team were speaking on ‘Emotional AI and Smart Cities’ at the 14th International Conference on Computers, Privacy and Data Protection (CPDP) was held on 28th January 2021. The session, which was chaired by Lachlan Urquhart (University of Edinburgh), featured experts from industry, academia and the civil and public sectors to give a well-rounded picture of the use of emotional AI technologies today and in the future.

The main theme of the panel was the use of emotional AI technologies in different fields. Kentaro Ryu (ZMP) gave a presentation on the use case of robotic automobiles in smart cities while also discussing an overview of the data collected by ZMP robots. Hiroshi Miyashita (Chuo University and organiser) discussed the Japanese Super City legislation, the emergence of emotion detection in vehicles and case law relevant to this. Konstantina Vemou (EDPS) presented a European perspective on facial and emotion recognition introducing how it is covered by GDPR and the relevance of Data Protection Impact Assessment. Paul Breitbarth (TrustArc) gave a review of the Dutch perspective with a special emphasis on a Dutch DPA investigation into smart cities. Lena Podoletz (University of Edinburgh) discussed the use of emotional AI in policing and criminal justice.

UN Committee on the Rights of the Child adopts General Comment 25 on children’s rights in relation to the digital environment

Thu, 04 Feb 2021 00:00:00 +0000

On February 4th 2021 the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child adopted General Comment 25 on children’s rights in relation to the digital environment. As Prof. Sonia Livingstone explains, ‘it’s a game changer’ in that the General Comment ’will land on the desk of every government in the world,’ with each being duty-bound to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.

From the point of view of the Lab, we’re thrilled. We submitted an extended Comment on the need to recognise that profiling of children’s emotional life is profoundly problematic. Sections 17, 63 and 64 of General Comment 25 seem to have taken this onboard.

UN Committee on the Rights of the Child: Comments from the Lab

Fri, 13 Nov 2020 00:00:00 +0000

The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child is drafting a general comment on children’s rights in relation to the digital environment. McStay, Miyashita, Rosner and Urquhart from The Emotional Lab entered a submission, offering insight and comment on the draft general comment. In the Lab’s submission, they discuss technologiesthat gauge child biometrics to infer emotion and other qualitative states. They focus on:(1)children’s toys and services; and (2) educational technologies (edtech).

COVID-19: How can we communicate risk in a post-truth world?

Mon, 26 Oct 2020 00:00:00 +0000

On 26 October 2020, Vian Bakir gave a talk titled ‘COVID-19: How can we communicate risk in a post-truth world?’ to XXXII Meeting of Philosophy & Theory of Human Sciences, Philosophy Department, at the renowned Unesp/Brazil (campus Marília/Sao Paulo).

Her talk discusses the scale and character of COVID-19 false information, and considers a range of coercive and non-coercive multi-stakeholder solutions available to solve the ‘wicked problem’ of eliminating the spread and impact of false information on COVID-19.

Emotional AI Lab on facial recognition at Open Rights Group Scotland

Thu, 15 Oct 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Lachlan Urquhart (@moosebyte) spoke on the connection between emotional AI and facial recognition at Open Rights Group Scotland. If short on time go to 22mins for Lachlan, but you’ll be missing out on ace talks from Benedetta Catanzariti and Areeq Chowdhury on how the technology is used, the risks posed to our rights, and how it should be regulated.

How social media is changing elections, for the Government of Victoria in Australia

Thu, 15 Oct 2020 00:00:00 +0000

For the Government of Victoria, Australia, our report on how social media changing is elections. Report here.

For Better …

On the positive side, social media campaigning may increase engagement with citizens on issues that they care about. Where conducted openly and honestly, microtargeting can help manifest voters’ desires, concerns and policy preferences to politicians, thereby helping elected leaders develop programs that meet voters’ needs.3 For instance, the UK’s Electoral Commission (the elections regulator) observes that there is value in microtargeting if conducted transparently and honestly: ‘For example, people who live three streets from the hospital that they are particularly interested in will want to know about plans to close that hospital or suchlike.’

New report time! ‘Emotional AI and Children: Ethics, Parents, Governance’

Tue, 18 Aug 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Teaming with Dr. Gilad Rosner from the IOT Privacy Forum, we set out to explore the socio-technical terms by which emotional AI and related applications should be used in children’s toys, if at all. Alert to scope for corporate abuse and questionable ethics (and legality), we also saw scope for enhanced interactivity, heightened play, enjoyment and, depending on the design of the toys, potentially even creativity.

Report here.

We were especially interested in the views of parents so, in addition to interviewing experts from the emotional AI industry, policy, academia, education and child health, we carried out UK surveys and focus groups (the latter with much help from Dr. Kate Armstrong and the Institute of Imagination in London).

Emotional AI and Civil Rights: The Salutary Case of Facebook

Mon, 03 Aug 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Last month saw the publication of Facebook’s Civil Rights Audit – Final Report.From the perspective of our emotional AI projects, this audit is well worth reading. We consider Facebook to be a significant emotional AI company that harms the world’s civic body when it enables propagation of hate speech and affective disinformation, as well as deception, voter suppression and other civic ills. Those paying attention to the emotional AI sector, may be more used to hearing about companies like Affectiva and Realeyes that utilise computer vision and Ekman’s ‘basic emotions’ typology. However, some of the most influential companies on the planet have long been interested in AI and emotion.

The Health of the Civic Body: Emotional AI & Political Campaigning

Mon, 15 Jun 2020 00:00:00 +0000

A healthy civic body requires that citizens are not subjected to undue influence when making key decisions, such as who to vote for. Research from the Emotional AI Lab and the network for Media and Persuasive Communication suggests the need for parliament and regulators to make digital political campaigning more transparent, to avoid such undue influence.

As part of their recently awarded ESRC/JST-funded project on Emotional AI in Cities: Cross Cultural Lessons from UK and Japan on Designing for An Ethical Life, Vian Bakir and Andrew McStay have been raising awareness of the impact of ‘emotional AI’ on civic processes, including political campaigning.

Webinar on (Mediated) Emotion in the Age of the COVID-19 Pandemic

Thu, 16 Apr 2020 00:00:00 +0000

#Announcement

You are invited to participate in a Zoom webinar on (Mediated) Emotion in the Age of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Tuesday 21 April, 8-10 am (British Summer Time), 5-7 pm (AEST).

If you’d like to join, please contact Prof. David Marshall for an invite. Email: david.marshall@deakin.edu.au

Zoom invitations and code will be sent to participants directly by email.

Blurb and who’s who

Emotion has become a central component of our forms of online communication and sharing. With self-isolation, lockdowns, loss of work, and home immersion becoming our collective everyday culture in the age of the COVID-19 pandemic, online culture has become the new normal of para-social forms of emotional expression. Anxiety, fear and hate are coupled with aspirant desires to share affirming coping strategies, humour through memes, exhilaration through self-expression via dance, singing and pets. Of equal significance are the emerging emotions being shared about our massively transformed political culture and our changing conceptions of collective identity as a naturalized global culture is reformed and replaced by virtual connections and observations.

Turn That Frown Upside Down – Emotional AI And Regulation

Sat, 04 Apr 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Andrew and the emotional AI projects were a subject of an interview for the Big Data Value Association (an EU technology consortium tat partners with the European Commission). Interviewed by Joe Hardwell, McStay spoke about the social and cultural impact of emerging technologies, esp. those that interact with qualitative dimensions of human life. Full interview here.

Andrew interviewed for the CityScape podcast

Wed, 01 Apr 2020 00:00:00 +0000

A fun experience: I recorded a podcast with CityScape on the ethical implications of the deployment of emotional AI in smart cities. Much mileage in 30mins: security, social media, tomorrow’s workplace and more.

Podcast on Apple Podcasts here.

New paper: Emotional AI, soft biometrics and an unusual consensus on privacy

Wed, 01 Apr 2020 00:00:00 +0000

New out with Big Data & Society is ‘Emotional AI, soft biometrics and the surveillance of emotional life: An unusual consensus on privacy’. Full paper here.

What’s it about? This outlines emotional AI, considers key applications, reports on UK citizen perspectives and outlines industry views about emotional AI and privacy. Perhaps the most interesting thread though is the meed for a more collective approach to privacy. It’s too easy to think in terms of “My privacy” and, given the deployments of emotional AI (and other psycho-physiological sensing tech) coming down the line, we need to think about “Our privacy” now.

Clearview AI: comment from us in I News

Tue, 18 Feb 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Clearview is a controversial US facial recognition company raising concerns over privacy after it created a database using nearly three billion public photos of people from sites such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

Andy was asked for comment and insight by I News: published article here.

His lengthier and unpublished insights below:

1.) What does Clearview highlight about facial recognition and social media?

Taking at “face” value Clearview’s claim that they do search any private or protected info in social media accounts, this raises thorny questions about privacy, security and capitalism. The issue is that just because something is posted in a “public” social media space, does not make it fair game to re-use without informed consent.

Computers, Privacy and Data Protection conference (aka #CPDP2020)

Fri, 24 Jan 2020 00:00:00 +0000

It’s a wrap! Andrew McStay from the Emotional AI Lab was lucky enough to introduce and moderate a panel on emotional AI and toys featuring Frederike Kaltheuner (Mozilla), Gilad Rosner (Eleos and the IOT Privacy Forum), Ben Bland (Sensum and IEEE) and Giovanna Mascheroni (Università Cattolica of Milan).

Up first at 8:45am in the Grand Halle (which really is big), the goal was to bring together academic, industrial and civil society expertise to address the rise of emotional AI and empathic technologies, with a special focus on children’s toys and services. While we were interested in human rights, social [pre]caution, privacy and data protection concerns, we were also interested in domestic life and the micro-practices of what it means to live with systems that function by means of data about affect and emotion. Wanna know more? Check out slides here.

Andrew McStay and Vian Bakir awarded Flemish Center Data and Society Fellowships

Thu, 12 Dec 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Andrew McStay and Vian Bakir have been awarded Flemish Center Data and Society Fellowships to spend time with the Centre for IT & IP Law (CITIP) at the University of Leuven in Belgium. Among other activities, they will be giving Tackling Grand Challenges in Society talks under the auspice of the Joint Research Training Program 2019-2020 between the Law Schools of KU Leuven & University of Edinburgh.

Want to come?

Date & time: Tuesday, December 17, 16h-18h30

Emotional AI team grant win from UKRI-JST Joint Call on Artificial Intelligence and Society

Thu, 12 Dec 2019 00:00:00 +0000

We’re more than a little pleased to announce that our application (‘Emotional AI in Cities: Cross Cultural Lessons from UK and Japan on Designing for An Ethical Life’) for funding from the UKRI-JST Joint Call on Artificial Intelligence and Society has been successful.

A 3-year project beginning Jan 1st 2020, we continue work on biometric and online technologies that sense, learn and interact with emotions, moods, attention and intentions. Only 5 or so years ago, this was the preserve of start-ups trying to create services out of affective computing. Nowadays the largest companies in the West and Japan are deploying emotional AI and empathic technology systems in cars, streets, classrooms, homes and more.

Emotional AI and EdTech: new paper!

Wed, 06 Nov 2019 00:00:00 +0000

New paper day here :)

I’m very pleased to announce that ‘Emotional AI and EdTech: serving the public good?’ has been published with Learning, Media and Technology. Linky.

Exploring emotional AI and empathic technologies in an educational context, it approaches this with an open mind. As I’ve argued elsewhere, the technologies themselves have scope to do social good, entertain and serve. However, this paper flags problems in education contexts. First is technological capability, the next normative and the last legal. Notwithstanding problems of reverse inference associated with approaches such as facial coding, their use on children brings unique problems. Children’s emoting does not work the same way as adults, nor conveniently fit into facial action coding system boxes. Children misbehaving, eh? At a normative level, there is debate to be had. Use of technology to enhance learning and wellbeing is in principle good, but how should this should be balanced with privacy, dignity and the right not to be commercially exploited? See paper for more on this. Likewise for data protection, edtech raises all sorts of problems – not least around minimisation and necessity.

Looking forward to 2020: CPDP and SxSW

Fri, 25 Oct 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Two big announcements: I’m organising a panel for the Computers, Privacy and Data Protection (CPDP conference in Brussels, Jan 2020. Working title is Emotional AI and Empathic Technologies: Rights, Children and Domestication. I’m organising and moderating, but the panel will feature: Dr. Frederike Kaltheuner of Privacy International (also in receipt of a Mozilla Fellowship); Dr. Gilad Rosner of the Internet of Things Privacy Forum; Ben Bland of the empathic technology firm Sensum; Dr. Giovanna Mascheroni is part of the EU Kids Online network and editor of the groundbreaking book, The Internet of Toys: Practices, Affordances and the Political Economy of Children’s Smart Play.

November 2019 (EURA Center of Excellence Regulation of Robotics and Artificial Intelligence, Unicef policy workshop)

Fri, 25 Oct 2019 00:00:00 +0000

November is shaping up to be a very interesting month. Teaching continues here in Bangor, but as it’s my light semester I’m only running my #PrivacyandtheMedia module. Lots of great student wide-ranging discussion on modern privacy though and students continue to impress in their presentations.

Next week I’m in Pisa doing a guest seminar at the Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna and then an invited presentation at the EURA Center of Excellence Regulation of Robotics and Artificial Intelligence conference. Really looking forward to these as the focus is on AI and manipulation of people, something I haven’t looked at as closely as I might. Can we conceive the relationship between robots and humans in terms of trust? Can robots induce human beings to develop an emotional attachment if not entirely delusional feelings? Might self-determination suffice in legitimizing such deceptive practices?

Report on Emotional AI, Japan & UK: Cross-Cultural Conversations

Thu, 17 Oct 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Wow, with delegates from (deep breath now) the New School for Social Research in New York, Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University (APU), Northumbria University, University of Cambridge, Keele University, Kyoto University, Freie Universität Berlin, Meiji University, University of Sheffield, Rikkyo University, University of British Columbia University of South Carolina, Chuo University, Japanese Ministry of Defence, Digital Catapult, Sensum, Nvidia, Sensing Feeling, Centre for Data Ethics and Innovation, Privacy International, Dyson School of Design Engineering, Internet of Things Privacy Forum, Coventry University, ITD-GBS Tokyo, Doshisha University UK Cabinet Office, Ernst and Young, and (nearly there) independent artists, the team (Vian Bakir, Peter Mantello, Lachlan Urquhart and me [Andy]) explored ethical questions around emotional AI and empathic technologies.

Berlin, IEEE, #P7014 and The Sprint

Fri, 04 Oct 2019 00:00:00 +0000

This week was spent in Berlin debating the ethics of ‘empathic technologies’ that sense and interact with human affects and emotion. The goal of us IEEE P7014 group members was to think about how to design global standards for organisations working with data about emotions/affect that sit in relation to human rights and regional law. How does one do this, given the myriad of use cases? Some uses are entirely benign, some terrifying and others currently freaky, but likely to become routine. And, given this is emergent, how does one anticipate the unanticipatable? Also, what is the purpose of a “standard” that is entirely voluntary – what’s the point?

This time with feeling, the failure of facial coding and what next

Fri, 04 Oct 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Co-authored with Dr. Lachlan Urquhart from the University of Edinburgh, the paper ‘***‘***This time with feeling?’ Assessing EU data governance implications of out of home appraisal based emotional AI;’ is now out.

What is it about and why does it matter? Criticisms of facial coding have long existed, but recent scholarship and industrial development is bringing about widespread as well as specialist mistrust. On the one hand this is good – lots of folk have been quick to label this as pseudoscience. Less thought has gone into implications of industrial remedies. We argue that this will inevitably entail use of data about internal physiological and experiential contexts, but also factors external to an individual, i.e. likely to be even more invasive practices. To explore this, this paper asks and answers the following question: With regard to deployment in out-of-home situations, what are the legal and privacy implications of contextual and appraisal-based emotion capture?

Two down in Tokyo, London to go (interim report here)

Thu, 05 Sep 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Next Monday (Sept 9th) sees the team (Prof. Vian Bakir, Dr. Lachlan Urquhart, Prof. Peter Mantello and Prof. Andrew McStay) in London for the third seminar of our “Emotional AI: Comparative Considerations for UK and Japan across Commercial, Political and Security Sectors” series. We’re a little excited.

Funded by the ESRC and AHRC, in 2019 we have generated conversation among UK and Japanese academics, industry, artists, NGOs and regulators. The goal has been to understand the constitutional, commercial, civic, policing and security implications of a world where emotional AI increasingly plays a central role.

International Conference on Affective Computing and Intelligent Interaction (ACII 2019/SEAIxI)

Wed, 04 Sep 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Early September saw me in Cambridge for the International Conference on Affective Computing and Intelligent Interaction (ACII 2019) for a workshop organised by NeurodataLab on Social & Emotion AI for Industry SEAIxI. In my invited talk I argued that in multiple ways (not all good) technologies that function in relation to emotion are coming of age, at least to those outside of the affect, empathic and emotion community.

This seems to be occurring at along at least two ways: the first is methodological (it’s not just about accuracy, but whether the right questions are being asked of the thing being sensed); and the second is in relation to governance questions, which includes normative ethics, but goes beyond to involve questions around design, business cultures, regulation and law.

IEEE P7014: Ethical considerations in Emulated Empathy in Autonomous and Intelligent Systems

Wed, 21 Aug 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Recent weeks have seen Andrew involved with the launch of a new Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers group to study emotional AI and technologies that simulate empathy (understanding of emotions, affect and perspective). It is named P7014 (under the P7000 series that deals with ethics concerns during systems design. (Also see Ethically Aligned Design report (p91 onwards) that came out of P7000 work.)

Emotional AI project in The Observer and The Guardian

Sat, 17 Aug 2019 00:00:00 +0000

I did this interview for the Guardian a few weeks ago, so assumed my contributions were not going to make the final edit. Turns out they did and the emotional AI book and the project gets a big mention. It cites empirical UK attitude surveys, but I also get the article sign-off quote:

Most companies and organisations agree that we are going to see more of this stuff in the early 2020s,” says McStay. “I would guess around 2021, 2022. That sounds quite fanciful in a sense, but if you begin from the premise that there’s personal, economic and organisational value in understanding human emotion, then there’s a certain inevitability about these technologies.

Interview for MIT Tech Review on emotional AI and online dating

Fri, 02 Aug 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Writing for MIT Tech Review, Tanya Basu reached out to Andrew for comment on the dating app company, AIMM, that seeks to disrupt the $2.5 billion online dating industry, currently dominated by the Match Group owned by IAC, whose conglomerate includes Match, Tinder, OkCupid, and Plenty of Fish. Featuring emotional AI capacity, Andrew had quite a bit to say. MIT Tech Review article in full here.

Response to the DCMS parliamentary inquiry on reality TV

Fri, 02 Aug 2019 00:00:00 +0000

August sees the publication of Andrew McStay’s and Vian Bakir’s responses to the UK Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) parliamentary inquiry into reality media (terms of reference here).

Launched following the death of guests following filming for leading UK reality media shows (The Jeremy Kyle Show and Love Island), we took a different angle from critiquing existing reality media. Instead, we considered the future of media – one that features emotional AI across a range of media that sense emotion and gauge authenticity. The Piers Morgan show, with emotion and sincerity testing – you heard it here first!

Japan: 3 weeks, wow!

Tue, 23 Jul 2019 00:00:00 +0000

July saw the team giving multiple talks at Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University in Beppu, and in Tokyo for our seminars for the Cross-Cultural Conversation on Emotional AI: Japan and UK project. With delegates from New School for Social Research in New York, Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University, Bangor University, University of Edinburgh, Keele University, Kyoto University, Freie Universität Berlin, University of Meiji, University of Sheffield, Rikko University, University of British Columbia Chapel Hill University, Chuo University, Ministry of Defense, Sensum, ITD-GBS Tokyo, Doshisha University and independent artists, these were always going to be lively and fun events.