The Power of a Smile: How AI is Learning to Emote Like Humans

Monday - April 8 2024, 09:33 UTC - 9 months ago

AI is teaching robots to smile in a more human-like and genuine way by analyzing slight facial changes and predicting human expressions. This helps build trust between humans and robots as they enter our world for various purposes such as customer service, dangerous jobs, and assisting the elderly. However, there are concerns about the potential impact on human relationships and blurring the lines between humans and machines.

Comedy clubs are my favorite weekend outings. Rally some friends, grab a few drinks, and when a joke lands for us all—there’s a magical moment when our eyes meet, and we share a cheeky grin.

Smiling can turn strangers into the dearest of friends. It spurs meet-cute Hollywood plots, repairs broken relationships, and is inextricably linked to fuzzy, warm feelings of joy.

At least for people. For robots, their attempts at genuine smiles often fall into the uncanny valley—close enough to resemble a human, but causing a touch of unease. Logically, you know what they’re trying to do. But gut feelings tell you something’s not right.

It may be because of timing. Robots are trained to mimic the facial expression of a smile. But they don’t know when to turn the grin on. When humans connect, we genuinely smile in tandem without any conscious planning. Robots take time to analyze a person’s facial expressions to reproduce a grin. To a human, even milliseconds of delay raises hair on the back of the neck—like a horror movie, something feels manipulative and wrong.

Last week, a team at Columbia University showed off an algorithm that teaches robots to share a smile with their human operators. The AI analyzes slight facial changes to predict its operators’ expressions about 800 milliseconds before they happen—just enough time for the robot to grin back.

The team trained a soft robotic humanoid face called Emo to anticipate and match the expressions of its human companion. With a silicone face tinted in blue, Emo looks like a 60s science fiction alien. But it readily grinned along with its human partner on the same "emotional" wavelength.

Humanoid robots are often clunky and stilted when communicating with humans, wrote Dr. Rachael Jack at the University of Glasgow, who was not involved in the study. ChatGPT and other large language algorithms can already make an AI’s speech sound human, but non-verbal communications are hard to replicate.

Programming social skills—at least for facial expression—into physical robots is a first step toward helping "social robots to join the human social world," she wrote.

Under the Hood .

From robotaxis to robo-servers that bring you food and drinks, autonomous robots are increasingly entering our lives.

In London, New York, Munich, and Seoul, autonomous robots zip through chaotic airports offering customer assistance—checking in, finding a gate, or recovering lost luggage. In Singapore, several seven-foot-tall robots with 360-degree vision roam an airport flagging potential security problems. During the pandemic, robot dogs enforced social distancing.

But robots can do more. For dangerous jobs—such as cleaning the wreckage of destroyed houses or bridges—they could pioneer rescue efforts and increase safety for first responders. With an increasingly aging global population, they could help nurses to support the elderly.

Current humanoid robots are cartoonishly adorable. But the main ingredient for robots to enter our world is trust. As scientists build robots with increasingly human-like faces, we want their expressions to match our expectations. It’s not just about mimicking a facial expression, but also understanding when to perform it. We don’t want robots to fake a smile, but rather react in a genuine way.