STEALING UR FEELINGS | NOAH LEVENSON

Noah Levenson is an American programmer and artist whose work particularly focuses on the study of artificial intelligence and the role AI has on everyday life, from facial recognition technologies to its use to target and monitor online consumer activities.

In 2019, Noah Levenson made Stealing Ur Feelings, described by the artist as “a deep learning-based AR experience that analyzes facial reactions to reveal the dangers of Big Tech’s emotional surveillance programs”. In his project, Levenson shows how companies are using increasingly refined technologies to decode users’ emotional states, what they feel disdain for or interest in, and use those indicators to create an emotional profile of people. Using technologies related to face tracking, combined with those related to eye tracking and mouth tracking to pick up microexpressions on our faces, it is possible to create databases dedicated to profiling users to figure out what content they are most interested in and train algorithms to feed users the same kind of information or entertainment content. A constant loop of the same content over and over.

Companies such as Snapchat and Instagram, which make extensive use of facial filters to allow users to share their emotions and feelings, use such information and exploit (legally) technologies that are able to access users’ cameras (used to apply facial filters) to track their behaviors and interests. If filters such as the cat eyes, the beauty ones, as well as those that simulate our premature aging, seem on the surface to be a harmless and temporary amusement to share alternative versions of ourselves with followers and friends, they instead hide sophisticated tracking mechanisms for profiling our persona, which give Big Tech free rein to exploit sensitive data as they most desire.

The question Stealing Ur Feelings asks is: are we really aware of how AI, algorithms and social media manage our data? Are we really in charge of the contents we choose to watch?

18/11/2023

STEALING UR FEELINGS | NOAH LEVENSON

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