AI Can Now Read Human Emotions: Can Event Planners Leverage This Technology?

So far, event planners have used event surveys, feedback and polls to measure how audiences feel about their event. While this is still a very valid method of gauging audience responses, it also presupposes that participants are always willing to engage with you.

But if you don’t have an event app or voting system for attendees to use, you could be losing out on vital information. Also, disinterested event participants may not even be keen on giving you their honest feedback – even if you provide them with ways of doing so.

A new era of AI

Now, artificial intelligence (AI) offers event planners a new way to understand clients, more closely than ever before. Thanks to a technology called “Emotion Recognition”, computers can now look at event attendees and determine how an attendee is feeling.

How does it work? A camera captures a visual of your attendee, and AI uses emotional recognition to gauge how they’re feeling, based on their facial expressions, body language, and other visually recognisable features.

Applications at events

This breakthrough technology can be used to gain a better read on your audience members at every part of your event venue, including:

• Registration: Are participants smiling and happy throughout the registration process? Or are they losing patience and getting frustrated with the crowds and queues. (And if they are, what can you do to alleviate this situation on Day 2, or at your next event?)

• Main event space: How are participants feeling at various parts of the main event area? Do you notice participants perking up when listening to presentations from certain speakers? Or are there certain activities that appear to be particularly engaging? With emotion recognition technology, you’ll get an honest assessment of how audiences really feel about your speakers, activities, and everything else that’s going on around your event space.

• Everything else: Your cameras can also tell you how participants about your choice of food, gamified activities, and much more. It’s all about planning how you can intelligently use technology to your advantage.

Not quite one-size-fits-all

Is emotion recognition technology set to transform the world of events planning and cast all other solutions aside? Not quite. There is a genuine concern about the invasiveness of emotion recognition technology and all the cameras that are involved with it. In fact, numerous cities across the globe have already banned technology because of these concerns.

At present, this technology presents exciting opportunities for event planners but needs to be implemented with careful consideration of your event attendees’ profiles (and their openness towards technology like this).

For now, the most widely accepted way of getting feedback on your events is still the trusted event app – which audiences also love because of its ability to gamify any event and multiply its fun factor. Still, this is an eye-opening piece of tech that deserves the attention of event planners.