[fomented]

Title says it all. I was just wondering if anybody would have thoughts on what something like that could go for. Something that reads expressions and minute facial movements and is able to spit out somebody's thoughts.

I know it sounds a bit nutty, but what would something like that go for?

[DramaKing]

Title says it all. I was just wondering if anybody would have thoughts on what something like that could go for. Something that reads expressions and minute facial movements and is able to spit out somebody's thoughts.

I know it sounds a bit nutty, but what would something like that go for?

$5 - It's completely nutty. A vision model powering a lie detector might be something, but there's no facial expression that shows someone wants a sandwich or whatever. Neuralink and its competitors are making great strides with BCI to move objects and so forth, but analyzing facial movements won't give you thoughts.

[Tyr]

Gotta agree with DramaKing here. We are now intertwining emotion/intent recognition with literal mind reading.

AI models trained on micro-expressions (like Paul Ekman's FACS) already exist and are getting crazy good. They are used in high-end security, gambling analysis, and experimental marketing to gauge if someone is stressed, lying, or engaged. However they don't read literal inner-monologue thoughts.

Still an epic concept.

[Pr0m3th3us]

Gotta agree with DramaKing here. We are now intertwining emotion/intent recognition with literal mind reading.

AI models trained on micro-expressions (like Paul Ekman's FACS) already exist and are getting crazy good. They are used in high-end security, gambling analysis, and experimental marketing to gauge if someone is stressed, lying, or engaged. However they don't read literal inner-monologue thoughts.

Still an epic concept.

I do love the concept and out of the box thinking but i cant say that many people would be interesting in buying it currently as its may border on pseudoscience? Not that people dont buy that stuff, i mean alchemy is pseudoscience but people still buy crap on it and believe 100% in it. Will this be a thing someday? Probably, a long time from now though and it will prob be tied together with Elons Neuralink or something similar.

[Raijin]

Post a demonstration video of it in action.

[saibertron]

On the actual question, what would something like this go for, since nobody addressed that part yet: reframe it as emotion recognition rather than literal mind reading and there is already a real market with real comparables. Companies such as Affectiva, now part of Smart Eye, Noldus FaceReader, and iMotions sell exactly this, facial micro-expression and emotion analysis, and none of them sell it as a consumer app.

The money is in B2B licensing. Market research firms pay for ad and UX testing panels, call centers and security teams pay for stress and deception cues layered on top of an interview or a video call, and automotive companies pay for driver attention monitoring. Pricing in that space runs from a few hundred dollars a month for a small API usage tier up to five and six figure annual contracts for enterprise seats with support and custom model tuning.

The consumer angle, an app that tells a regular person what someone else is thinking, is a much harder sell precisely because of what DramaKing and TYR already said: it will not reliably read intent or literal thoughts, only visible affect, so as a mass market product you would be competing with novelty lie detector apps that mostly get downloaded once and deleted. If you want this to go somewhere real, the B2B research and monitoring angle is the one with actual budgets behind it, not the app store.

[Moewnoob]

@formented, sounds interested and would like to know more about your mind reading app. Would love to see but can't seem to pm you.

[Anonynuk]

Title says it all. I was just wondering if anybody would have thoughts on what something like that could go for. Something that reads expressions and minute facial movements and is able to spit out somebody's thoughts.

I know it sounds a bit nutty, but what would something like that go for?

If you mean a real system that tries to infer what someone is thinking from measurable signals—rather than literally reading thoughts—you could suggest some pretty interesting uses:

🧠 Brain-computer interfaces — control a computer, cursor, wheelchair, robot, or other device through neural activity.
🎮 Hands-free gaming — detect intended actions and translate them into game controls.
🗣️ Thought-to-speech — help people who can't speak communicate by decoding intended words from brain signals.
🦾 Prosthetic control — allow someone to control an artificial limb more naturally.
🧑‍💻 Hands-free computing — select buttons, type, navigate menus, or operate software without a mouse/keyboard.
😴 Sleep/dream research — analyze brain activity to study sleep stages and potentially reconstruct limited aspects of dream content.
🧘 Attention/focus monitoring — estimate concentration or mental workload and adapt an interface accordingly.
🚗 Driver monitoring — detect cognitive fatigue, distraction, or loss of attention.
🤖 AI assistants — infer a user's intended command before they physically enter it.
🔬 Neuroscience research — study how the brain represents language, images, memories, and decisions.
🏥 Assistive technology — provide communication and computer access for people with severe motor disabilities.
🕵️ Forensic/research applications — potentially determine whether someone recognizes a stimulus, although this is far from reliable enough to be treated as literal lie detection.
🥽 AR/VR interfaces — combine brain signals with eye tracking and gestures to create extremely low-friction interfaces.
📚 Adaptive education — estimate cognitive load and adjust difficulty or presentation accordingly.