Will recognizing emotions help us find love?

• The documentary

  Love under algorithm

  offers a free adaptation of the eponymous book by Judith Duportail.

  In this investigation, the journalist had sought to learn more about the functioning of Tinder.

• Among the challenges of tomorrow, Jérôme Clément-Wilz and Judith Duportail evoke the recognition of emotions.

• What will this artificial intelligence technology change in dating?

Algorithms know everything about you. From your digital traces (likes, purchases, searches, emails, etc.), artificial intelligence learns to identify you, to know your tastes, your social habits and even your moods... Dating apps are no exception to Rule. They know how to pinpoint your preferences in terms of men or women to introduce you to the ideal candidate. They dive into your exchanges, throw themselves on the slightest clue to create your composite portrait. Imagine that these same algorithms are able to detect your emotions in real time. A smile when reading a message, a grimace in front of a photo of a suitor with an ungrateful physique, a barely perceptible grin in front of another profile… A world of possibilities is offered to dating. And especially to the recommendation.

Love under Algorithm

, directed by Jérôme Clément-Wilz and broadcast this Wednesday on France 2, explores the technologies behind our "swipes" (swiping the screen to the left or right to validate a profile on Tinder) and is already considering our future uses.

“The future challenge of these technologies will be to identify our emotions live”, anticipates the documentary which plunges into the digital intimacy of journalist Judith Duportail, author of the eponymous book.

What door does the recognition of emotions open in the world of dating?

Are we finally going to have all the right to love?

Finding a soul mate is not an issue

Before answering this burning question, let's pause for a moment on the reality of these technologies. Technically, emotion recognition already works well. "There are several technologies for detecting emotions, the one we see in

based on the face could apply when two people interact via a dating app, explains Guillaume Chaslot, algorithmician who worked on the algorithm of YouTube and Google. There are others who focus on writing and scan the texts exchanged. The world of human resources already uses emotion recognition to analyze a candidate's responses during a job interview. “The AI ​​tries to see if the answer is conclusive with the emotions expressed by the candidate's face, confirms Isabelle Collet, computer scientist and teaching and research professor at the University of Geneva. It's not magic either. If when the question is asked, the person feels pain or hears a noise,its expression will not be conclusive and it will have nothing to do with the matter”.

On the dating app side, this technology could improve the user experience. But if you're hoping that recognizing emotions will help you find love more easily, you've been fooling yourself. Because,

, dating apps have no (economic) interest in helping you settle down. If you meet your soul mate, you don't need the app anymore. Logic. “There is an extraordinary gamification [the use of game mechanisms] of the algorithm, notes Isabelle Collet. You want to leaf through, to look at what's new in store, you match from time to time, that's what pays off”. The app should frustrate you enough to keep you coming back and entertain you enough to stay on it for a long time.

For an engineer, developing such technology is an algorithmic feat. But in reality, it's more about marketing. "If it costs Tinder more than it brings in, he's going to make fun of your emotions," continues Isabelle Collet. On the other hand, if showing that it is able to recognize your emotions gives it a competitive advantage over other players in the sector because users will think that Tinder is more powerful, it will. The heart of the matter is not love but advertising. “When Tinder links to Spotify and asks you what music you like on the pretext that music is a good icebreaker, it makes you think it's optimizing, but in reality it's making you give the maximum information about you”, continues the specialist.Because data capture is the first challenge of emotion recognition and artificial intelligence in general.

A gold mine for advertisers

“Recognizing the emotions of individuals makes it possible to see which ad works and which ad does not work on them, abounds Guillaume Chaslot.

With simple photos, an algorithm can already know more about you than yourselves”.

In 2017, a study by Stanford University, relayed by The Guardian, showed that from a few photos, an algorithm could correctly distinguish a person defining themselves as homosexual from a person defining themselves as heterosexual, with a rate success rate of 81% for men and 74% for women.

“With emotions, you can go even further: what are your weak points, your vulnerabilities.

What makes you mad…”, he continues.

And that's a gold mine for advertisers and, by extension, for apps.

Find the Future(s) section here

And the candidate for love in all this?

Not much.

Recognition of emotions will perhaps make it possible to refine the selection of profiles to be as close as possible to user expectations.

And even.

It is not even certain that this technology creates better matches than a completely random recommendation algorithm.

Society

"Dating fatigue": "Apps erase ambivalence, finesse and ambiguity, which create the beauty of romantic encounters", considers journalist Judith Duportail

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Tinder: How this 'sexist' app reserves the right to 'assess our IQ'

• Artificial intelligence

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• Future(s)

• Meeting sites

• Tinder

• Culture

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