EmotionML – A Real XML Schema

Something that caught my eye in the weekly W3C Newsletter was the release of EmotionML 1.0 XML schema (link corrected). The main purpose is to annotate emotional reaction within a recording (video/audio, but conceivably text as well), but the other is to define a framework for emotion recognition on video (Hmmmm).

There are some use cases listed on the site as well as the first draft of the markup, but it looks like a psychology degree would be helpful here. Interestingly, a lot of it has to do with concepts like “arousal”, “friendliness”, “dominance”. At first glance, the values seem a little more related to body language (and inferring emotion from body language).

I can see some very legitimate uses for a markup schema like this, but I also have to confess being a little spooked. How accurate will an “automatic recognition” system be and will it hold up in court? Stay tuned, I guess.

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One Response to EmotionML – A Real XML Schema

  1. DAVID R STONG says:

    Your reference to a psychologist and the info about EmotionML makes me think of what’s bothered me about video description (and ALT text)- the revelation of things that are artistically and subtly implied. A description can interpret a look as “disinterested” or “sinister” where a sited user has no such revelation. The writer/artist may have wanted the look to be subtle enough to be missed and an emotion free but accurate description would do perfectly. I’m thinking this sort of coding, “manual annotation of data”, is perhaps “handicappist” at its heart: the well-meaning intention is to help people who we mistakenly assume lack the ability to recognize subtlety and allusion. That isn’t a function of blindness, deafness or any other condition of sensory abnormality. I hope everyone takes a deep breath and considers artistic intent in all of this. Describe accurately what happens and let people interpret as they can. Let people sense sarcasm from circumstance without seeing a smiley face.
    On the other hand, having an automatic teller machine know that I’m getting pissed might be a good thing….

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