Microsoft to stop selling emotion-reading technology

Microsoft also said customers now must obtain approval to use its facial recognition services

Microsoft Corp has decided to stop selling technology that guesses someone's emotion based on a facial image. It emphasized that it would no longer provide unfettered access to facial recognition technology. The actions are in tune with endeavors by leading cloud providers to control sensitive technologies on their own as lawmakers in the United States and Europe continue to lay out comprehensive legal limits. Since the least last year, Microsoft has been reviewing whether emotion recognition systems are rooted in science.

Existing customers will have a year before they lose access to artificial intelligence tools that are used to infer emotion, gender, age, smile, facial hair, hair, and makeup. Alphabet Inc's Google Cloud last year started a similar evaluation. Google blocked 13 planned emotions from its tool for recognizing emotions. It was evaluating a new system that would describe movements such as frowning and smiling without seeking to attach them to an emotion. According to Microsoft, customers must now obtain approval to use its facial recognition services, which will allow people to log into websites or open locked doors through a face scan.