Datafied Bearbaiting and Emotional AI: Anticipating the Quantified Jeremy Kyle Show Submission to DCMS Committee Inquiry into Reality TV

This DCMS submission focuses on the following questions posed by the DCMS Committee inquiry into reality TV: What is the future for reality TV of this kind? How does it accord with our understanding of, and evolving attitudes to mental health?
We offer a cautionary note on a likely future of reality media - where the media industry makes use of data about emotions to add new layers of engagement through “emotional AI”. This emotional AI entails affective computing and AI techniques that read and react to emotions through text, voice, computer vision and biometric sensing. While usage of emotional AI has scope to enhance experience of media, there is scope for abuse when competing for audience attention, engagement and advertising revenue.