下一代emoji表情可能是你的面部表情

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试图帮助人们更轻松地回复朋友们在网上发布的照片和视频——通过人工智能技术捕捉人们的面部表情并自动将其转化成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.

这款APP名叫Polygram，目前仅可在苹果手机免费下载，是一款可发表照片、视频和文字的社交软件。

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.

虽然在Facebook上，除了翘拇指（点赞）的小图标外，你有一小部分预先设定好的表情可供选择，但Polygram却是使用神经网络，在手机上本地运行程序，识别你的微笑、皱眉、无聊、尴尬、惊讶以及更多的表情。

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的联合创始人之一马辛•米克称，这款APP的人工智能系统通过手机的前置镜头捕捉用户面部表情，并尽可能快地分析一系列图像，而非简单抓取瞳孔、鼻子等面部特定部位。米克说，iPhone的图形处理器可以直接在手机上完成这一系列工作。

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.

当你浏览APP中的帖子时（现在帖子中似乎总包含一些豪华度假胜地、豪华跑车和身着紧身衣的女性等内容），你会在应用底部看到一个小黄脸，它的表情会随你的表情实时变化。

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.

不过APP实时反应面部表情有大约20毫秒的轻微延迟，基本不会被人注意到。APP会把你的反应记录在屏幕边缘的小表情框中（如果你的表情变化多次的话，就会记录下多个表情），你还能在表情框中看到已经阅读过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体上对自己的看法，Polygram对这类人就颇具吸引力：用户可以看到自己发表的所有照片或者视频的表情回复记录，以及其他一些细节，比如谁看了这些帖子、他们看了多长时间，以及他们的所在地。

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.

这可能会让一些超级用户觉得很方便，但却不讨注重保护隐私的用户的欢心。即使可以匿名，他们也担心自己的所作所为被追踪。

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+?)

许多APP开发者都知道，开发一款成功的社交媒体软件并不是容易的事；不是每一款APP都能像Instagram 或者Snapchat一样。（还记得Secret吗？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的开发者说，他们目前主要在自己的这款APP上运用该技术，不过，将来这项技术可能会在其他APP派上用场，比如说telemedicine，这样医生或者护士就能通过看患者的表情来判断他们的心理反应了。

Eventually, they say, they may release software tools that let other developers come up with their own applications for the technology.

最后，他们说，他们也许会发布这款软件的工具包，让其他开发者灵活地运用这项技术。