Microsoft’s Kinect for X-Box 360 Could Be Watching You at Home

Source: vigilantcitizen.com

Barry Levine
NewsFactor

Microsoft Vice President Dennis Durkin told a conference that the new Kinect controller for the Xbox 360 can watch and report on users. The Kinect, Durkin said, can tell advertisers such details as who is in a room and what they’re wearing. Microsoft has denied that the data captured is being used as portrayed in Minority Report and 1984.

Microsoft’s hands-free game controller Kinect

Is Kinect, Microsoft’s new hands-free game controller, a step in the direction of the futures envisioned by the film Minority Report and the novel 1984? New reports of how the revolutionary controller for the Xbox 360 game console can be used raise those possibilities.

On Thursday, Microsoft Vice President Dennis Durkin told the BMO Digital Entertainment Investor Conference in New York that Kinect offers “a really interesting opportunity” to target content and ads based on who is playing, and to send data back to advertisers.

Seahawks or Giants?

“When you stand in front of it,” he said, according to news reports, “it has face recognition, voice recognition,” and “we can cater what content gets presented to you based on who you are.” Your wife, Durkin added, could see a different set of content choices than you do, and this can include advertising.

The advertiser will also know, he said, “how many people are in a room when an advertisement is shown,” or when a game is played. He said the system, and therefore advertisers, can also know how many people are engaged with a game or a sporting event, if they are standing up and excited — even if they are wearing Seahawks or Giants jerseys.

Apparently as a result of Durkin’s remarks, Microsoft issued a statement Thursday that neither its Xbox 360 video-game controller nor Xbox Live “use any information captured by Kinect for advertising targeting purposes.” The company added that it has a strong track record “for implementing some of the best privacy-protection measures in the industry.”

Kinect uses a camera peripheral to the Xbox 360, so players can control games and other software with body movements. The controller went on sale last week, and the company has forecast sales of five million units in the fourth quarter.

Home technology that watches you is common in dystopian visions of the future, such as in George Orwell’s 1984. In Minority Report, multimedia billboards present personalized ads to Tom Cruise’s character because they recognize him as he walks by.

Kinect for Computers

But the biggest futuristic takeaway from Minority Report usually cited is the gestural, in-the-air interaction with computer systems that the characters employ. Toward that future without mice or touchpads — potentially less threatening than being watched by your game machine — Kinect may also be a first step.

A computer hacker named Hector Martin, on a challenge from an electronic kit-making company called Adafruit, utilized Kinect to work on a PC. He enabled Kinect’s motion-capture system to interact with a Linux laptop and OpenGL drivers, and he reportedly is now working on interacting with the device’s voice-capture and control systems.

Adafruit’s challenge, accompanied by a prize of $3,000, was to use an open-source driver that would work with Kinect. Martin said he doesn’t have an Xbox. Others have reported making Kinect work with Windows 7 and Mac OS X computers, and the efforts raise the distinct possibility that Kinect and similar controllers could be used to control computers with hands-in-the-air motion, as in Minority Report.

Following reports of Martin’s achievement, Microsoft first issued a statement that it “does not condone the modification of its products,” and that “numerous hardware and software safeguards” are intended to reduce the chances of “product tampering.” It later noted that, in fact, Kinect software and hardware were not modified at all.

“What has happened is someone has created drivers that allow other devices to interface” with Kinect, the company said.

Brad Shimmin, an analyst with Current Analysis, said “what we’re seeing is the inevitable emergence of Minority Report.” He predicted that the possibility of Kinect watching you in your home could lead to a “firestorm” of criticism unless Microsoft takes steps to guard against that.

“It’s still surprising to me,” he said, “that some companies continue to ignore” the criticism that results from this kind of in-the-home tracking, “and automatically opt users in.” As Facebook and Google have learned from push back over other privacy issues, he said, that criticism always has the possibility of damaging their brand.

Source: vigilantcitizen.com

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