Smile! You're paying the bill

In China, facial recognition has become a new feature on self-service kiosks at KFC restaurants. Similar to the devices already used by McDonald’s (which only arrived in Brazil in July), the kiosks now offer a facial recognition payment method linked to the Alipay digital wallet app. But even this isn't exactly new to the Chinese, as the country currently has over 600 million active users on WeChat, a social network that not only connects users for conversations but also allows for the purchase of consumer goods and the payment of fees like electricity bills or traffic fines, just as it is also possible to schedule a doctor's appointment through the app, for example.

In Singapore, the selfie check-in implemented by Gol in its app will be part of kiosks installed at airports, starting with Changi, considered the best airport in the world for the last five years. In addition to deploying these new self-service kiosks, through which passengers will also be able to check their bags automatically, the airport will install a 70-meter-wide LED screen to broadcast welcome messages—yes, in the style of Westworld!

Meanwhile, initiatives like the digital girl Saya or even the company Soul Machines have been betting on the creation of extremely realistic "digital humans" that will be capable of interacting in a more natural and fluid way, including by recognizing facial expressions. From a speculative point of view, could this be the next step in self-service? A hyper-realistic digital human dedicated to understanding the mood and needs of customers based on facial reading, much like in Ancient Greece, when philosophers like Aristotle studied human features as indicators of diseases or symptoms of the spirit—that is, for example, broad noses were seen as an indicator of laziness.

But what is the basis for this correlation? Other researchers have been developing programs that would be capable of identifying whether or not a person is homosexual based on their face. According to the research, the new artificial intelligence has already been able to achieve a 91% accuracy rate. And how does this connect to payment and certification via facial recognition? It is easy to fall into a dystopian vision in the style of Black Mirror, especially if we start living based on a social economy, as seen in the episode Nosedive. Also in the China, there is already talk of using social credit scores to grant or restrict access to services like loans or university scholarships.

However, if we want to be more optimistic, we might consider how facial recognition could offer services and products based on our mood for the day, for example. The new trend identified by the company JWT Intelligence is "mood food"—that is, foods that can improve a person's mood while also boosting immunity or addressing issues like bloating. The insight came from research conducted by Monarch Airlines in partnership with Professor Charles Spence, an experimental psychologist who collaborated with The Fat Duck restaurant to create a special menu for air travel, but the potential applications for "mood food" are as vast as the variety of restaurants and cuisines found around the world today.

Perhaps one day, we will be able to use a self-service kiosk that understands that today, on this Monday after a long holiday weekend, we are feeling a bit down and unmotivated to get back into our routine... so why not opt for an anti-inflammatory Mediterranean diet, rich in vegetables, fish, olive oil, and grains, to make the day better and life a little easier? I can't wait.

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