Microsoft has developed a smart mirror, dubbed as Microsoft Magic Mirror that possesses the ability to identify and greet users, read their emotions as well as display time, weather and other information. The mirror, however, looks like an ordinary mirror.
The so-called Magic Mirror was recently showcased at the InnovFest Unbound 2016, a digital technology conference in Singapore. Currently, mirror is at the demo stage, but Microsoft believes that has real business potential, especially advertising and marketing industries could use the technology.
The magic mirror also conceals a face camera that can distinguish human emotions -- eight of them -- including anger, happiness and surprise. In fact, the Redmond tech titan has announced that it also plans to enhance the performance of the Magic Mirror and incorporate other aspects like app feeds including Facebook, Twitter and many more.
The mirror would be pretty useful for people when they wake up, CNBC quoted Izzat Khair, a member of the Microsoft Singapore developer experience team. "If you woke up, managed to style your hair and do your makeup and all the while getting results on the weather app and time updates," Khair added.
Talking about the business potential of the Magic Mirror, Khair said that the monitor of the mirror will allow the user to play an advertisement, while the camera that can snap a photo of the users that are viewing the advertisement. Subsequently, the facial recognition features could provide real-time data regarding how viewers responded to the advertisement, he added.
In terms of privacy and cyber security, Khair said that all data stored on the Magic Mirror like photos and correspondence via apps would actually be stored on Microsoft cloud and beyond the reach of any Microsoft engineer. Moreover, the data would be deleted automatically after 7 days.
Singapore's Minister for Foreign Affairs, Vivian Balakrishnan, who attended the InnovFest conference, said that one of his objectives for the country was to build approximately 100 million smart objects for the next 5 years, with a view to deal the Internet of Things phenomenon that was taking its place in our lives, Opp Trends reported.
Meanwhile, apparently, Microsoft is working with Singapore to help develop the Internet of Things infrastructure. In addition, the tech giant is also helping the country's Smart Nation initiative -- a plan that aims to develop local talent in the country and promote research and cyber security.
Watch the video on "Augmented Reality Magic Mirror using Kinect" below:
