Eye Contact Correction: Redirecting the eyes to look at the camera

This is unfortunate, and perhaps more pernicious than obvious deep fakes, is a video filter that lies to the recipients.

Several years ago during the pandemic, I enlisted a job coach to get me hired. One of her paramount concerns was my eye-contact with the camera. She said it's so important. Am I paying attention? Am I an honorable man who maintains eye contact when I'm in a conversation? If I look away, am I collecting my thoughts, or prevaricating?

Many supervisors, managers, and teachers will judge their employees by whether they can pay attention during meetings, or if they're distracted, in their phone's screen, looking at keyboard, glancing off at children or spouse. Even more important, if you're meeting your wife and she can't even maintain your attention, what kind of husband are you?

If you employ a gadget to lie about this, then I hope they fire you and find someone who'll be honest. I hope your wife sends you to sleep on the sofa.

That reminds me of a few months into the pandemic, one of the VPs at the company I was working at was presenting in a Zoom-based all-hands. I remember that he was very clearly looking directly into the eye of the camera as opposed to looking at his monitor's video feed like everyone else. I remember thinking that it felt a little bit weird and unnatural and very performative, like a politician, since he very obviously intentionally wanted to come across as more human by looking directly at the audience, although at the same time it was a fake look since he wasn't looking directly into the eyes of any one person, but a camera.

Perhaps other people didn't think about it as deeply as I did and maybe it did have the intended effect, but I remember I didn't see him or anyone else doing the same thing in any future all-hands.