Facial analysis technology to be used at the 2024 IAEE Expo! Expo!

Event attendees need to be aware of the growing trend of unannounced use of facial analysis technology at meetings. And if you plan to attend the International Association of Exhibitions and Events [IAEE]‘s December 2024 Expo! Expo!, you should read this post.

As recently reported by MeetingsNet, Expo! Expo! “will offer all exhibitors access to Zenus AI’s facial-analysis technology after a limited rollout at the 2023 [show]”. However, MeetingsNet also includes the following statement:

“Nicole Bowman, vice president of marketing and communications for IAEE, says that because the technology ‘gives anonymized sentiment about areas [of the show floor], we would not need to, nor did we in 2023, notify attendees’ that it was being used.” [emphasis added]
—Rob Carey, MeetingsNet, Expanded Use of Facial Analysis Coming to Events-Industry Show

Zenus’s policy on Informed Consent

But Zenus itself, on its website, emphasizes a different approach:

The reality of attendee awareness

When meeting attendees learn they are being monitored for age, gender, and emotions, reactions are often negative. For example, in response to Greg Kamprath’s post You Shouldn’t Use Facial Analysis At Your Event, attendees expressed discomfort after discovering that cameras were observing them “pretty much everywhere” at PCMA’s 2023 Convening Leaders event.

Why won’t IAEE inform Expo! Expo! attendees?

I have written extensively [1, 2, 3] about why I’ve referred to facial analysis as an “ethically dubious and scientifically suspect technology.”

As discussed in these posts, the design of Zenus’s technology does not allow individual attendees to opt out. If IAEE followed Zenus’s recommendation to notify attendees that facial analysis would operate “across the entire show floor” and attendees then requested not to be surveilled, IAEE and Zenus would be unable to comply with these requests without shutting down the entire system.

An added complication is that the 2024 IAEE Expo! Expo! will be held in California, where the California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018 (CCPA) grants consumers certain rights over the personal information that businesses collect about them. CCPA regulations define personal information as:

“information that identifies, relates to, or could reasonably be linked with you or your household“.

What does “relates to” mean?

Conversely, CCPA regulations define what is not personal information as [relevant portion]:

“information that a business has a reasonable basis to believe is lawfully made available to the general public by the consumer or from widely distributed media, or certain information disclosed by a consumer and made available if the consumer has not restricted the information to a specific audience“.

This grey area, which facial analysis technology exploits, remains in legal limbo, as neither definition clarifies whether consumers have the right to opt out.

Still, at the very least, attendees should have the right to request exclusion from facial analysis surveillance. IAEE’s decision not to inform attendees, despite Zenus’s recommendation, suggests an intent to sidestep these legal and ethical issues.

Conclusions

At a minimum, IAEE should comply with Zenus’s request they inform Expo! Expo! attendees that facial analysis technology will be operating across the show floor for exhibitors’ benefit.

Only then might we see how attendees truly feel about such surveillance.

What are your thoughts on using facial analysis to gauge “attendee sentiment”? Do you believe attendees have a legal or ethical right to be informed? Should they have the right to opt out?

Feel free to share your thoughts below!