多懂一點 | 下一代emoji表情可能是你的面部表情

The next generation of emojis will be based on your facial expressions

還

在尋找最全的emoji表情包？你out啦！未來最流行的emoji表情可能是你自己的表情，看著屏幕上的小黃臉隨著你的真實表情實時變化，該是多麼有趣的一件事啊。

A new app is trying to make it simpler to help you react to photos and videos that your friends post online — it's using AI to capture your facial expressions and automatically translate them into a range of emoji faces. 一款新型APP試圖幫助人們更輕鬆地回復朋友們在網上發布的照片和視頻——通過人工智慧技術捕捉人們的面部表情並自動將其轉化成emoji表情。

Polygram, which is free and available only for the iPhone for now, is a social app that lets you share things like photos, videos, and messages. 這款APP名叫Polygram，目前僅可在蘋果手機免費下載，是一款可發表照片、視頻和文字的社交軟體。

Unlike on, say, Facebook, though, where you have a small range of pre-set reactions to choose from beyond clicking a little thumbs-up icon, Polygram uses a neural network that runs locally on the phone to figure out if you're smiling, frowning, bored, embarrassed, surprised, and more. 雖然在Facebook上，除了翹拇指（點贊）的小圖標外，你有一小部分預先設定好的表情可供選擇，但Polygram卻是使用神經網路，在手機上本地運行程序，識別你的微笑、皺眉、無聊、尷尬、驚訝以及更多的表情。

Marcin Kmiec, one of Polygram's cofounders, says the app's AI works by capturing your face with the front-facing camera on the phone and analyzing sequences of images as quickly as possible, rather than just looking at specific points on the face like your pupils and nose. This is done directly on the phone, using the iPhone's graphics processing unit, he says. Polygram的聯合創始人之一馬辛•米克稱，這款APP的人工智慧系統通過手機的前置鏡頭捕捉用戶面部表情，並儘可能快地分析一系列圖像，而非簡單抓取瞳孔、鼻子等面部特定部位。米克說，iPhone的圖形處理器可以直接在手機上完成這一系列工作。

When you look at a post in the app (for now the posts seem to consist of a suspicious amount of luxury vacation spots, fancy cars, and women in tight clothing), you see a small yellow emoji on the bottom of the display, its expression changing along with your real one. 當你瀏覽APP中的帖子時（現在帖子中似乎總包含一些豪華度假勝地、豪華跑車和身著緊身衣的女性等內容），你會在應用底部看到一個小黃臉，它的表情會隨你的表情實時變化。

There's a slight delay—20 milliseconds, which is just barely noticeable— between what you're expressing on your face and what shows up in the app. The app records your response (or responses, if your expression changes a few times) in a little log of emoji on the side of the screen, along with those of others who've already looked at the same post. 不過APP實時反應面部表情有大約20毫秒的輕微延遲，基本不會被人注意到。APP會把你的反應記錄在屏幕邊緣的小表情框中（如果你的表情變化多次的話，就會記錄下多個表情），你還能在表情框中看到已經閱讀過同篇帖子的其他人的表情。

The app is clearly meant to appeal to those who really care about how they're perceived on social media: users can see a tally of the emoji reactions to each photo or video they post to the app, as well as details about who looked at the post, how long they looked at it, and where they're located. 有的人十分在意他人在社交媒體上對自己的看法，Polygram對這類人就頗具吸引力：用戶可以看到自己發表的所有照片或者視頻的表情回復記錄，以及其他一些細節，比如誰看了這些帖子、他們看了多長時間，以及他們的所在地。

This might be helpful for some mega-users, but could turn off those who are more wary about how their activity is tracked, even when it's anonymized. 這可能會讓一些超級用戶覺得很方便，但卻不討注重保護隱私的用戶的歡心。即使可以匿名，他們也擔心自己的所作所為被追蹤。

And, as many app makers know, it's hard to succeed in social media; for every Instagram or Snapchat there are countless ones that fail to catch on. (Remember Secret? Or Path? Or Yik Yak? Or Google+?) 許多APP開發者都知道，開發一款成功的社交媒體軟體並不是容易的事；不是每一款APP都能像Instagram 或者Snapchat一樣。（還記得Secret嗎？Path、Yik Yak和Google+呢？）

Polygram's founders say they're concentrating on using the technology in their own app for now, but they also think it could be useful in other kinds of apps, like telemedicine, where it could be used to gauge a patient's reaction to a doctor or nurse, for instance. Polygram的開發者說，他們目前主要在自己的這款APP上運用該技術，不過，將來這項技術可能會在其他APP派上用場，比如 telemedicine，這樣醫生或者護士就能通過看患者的表情來判斷他們的心理反應了。

Eventually, they say, they may release software tools that let other developers come up with their own applications for the technology. 最後，他們說，他們也許會發布這款軟體的工具包，讓其他開發者靈活地運用這項技術。❖

以上內容轉自日報網英語點津yani