Amazon Is Working On Getting To Know Their Customers Better

Amazon is working on a device that can read human emotions, and some people are less than thrilled about it. The project, code-named “Dylan,” reportedly assesses the user’s feelings based on the tone of his or her voice.

“Amazon is working on an Alexa-powered wearable that can read emotions…Using microphones and artificial intelligence to identify how we’re feeling, Amazon would be able to collect emotion information and perhaps share it with other health products,” Fortune.com reports. “Amazon’s device would use the emotion data to serve relevant ads or product recommendations to people based on their emotional state. So, if a person is feeling happy, they might see one ad or a particular product recommendation. If another person is feeling sad, fearful, angry, or any number of other emotions, they’d get different recommendations better suit their mood.”

Don Reisinger, a reporter for Fortune.com, says the device could lead users to question their own emotions.

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“Yet for many consumers, wearing a device that logs smiles instead of miles could be a step too far, even for the most tech-obsessed among us. A wearable that reads emotions could work well for targeting ads, but what happens if it says you’re feeling stressed when you’re not, or detects happiness when you’re really down? It could make you question your own feelings,” Reisinger writes. “As someone who firmly believes in therapy, evaluating one’s emotions, and digging into the things that really bothers us, I know how hard it is to identify and understand what we’re truly feeling in a moment. What makes Amazon think it can do a good job of understanding our emotions, when we often struggle to identify them, ourselves?”

Amazon declined to publicly comment on the project but did not deny the rumors it is working on emotion-reading technology.