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.

I would go so far as to say the uncorrected gaze is a lie. When I’m on a videoconference, I am looking directly at whoever is speaking, but the camera’s physical placement tells the “lie” that I’m looking down at something else. This is because we haven’t figured out a good way of placing the camera literally wherever the eyes of the other party show up on the screen. So the camera is, by necessity, in the wrong position for video conferencing. But if we can fix it in software, then we can mitigate the “lie” somewhat.

This is especially true for my set up, where I have two screens side-by-side with the camera replaced right between them. I just stare at the camera because otherwise it looks like I’m looking way off to the left or right. If I do look at the people who are talking, what they see is me looking off at “something else.” That’s a lie! :)

This is true, and unfortunate, but for the past 100 years, everyone has known that to make eye contact with a camera, you look into its lens. The instantaneous display of output is very recent, and if you ask a professional actress or news anchor what they do in the studio, they will tell you that they're trained to look into the camera lens, no matter what's on the monitors.

I contend that it's unproductive to train consumers otherwise. Yeah, we could look at the screen and have software correct it. Or, we may eventually integrate lenses into screens so that they're placed exactly right. But it seems kludgy to do this software fix. Just train people to look in the right place. (I hate iPhones and I'm unable/unwilling to do Facetime with them. Please use Meet or Teams.)

I'm gradually building skills that let me be aware of what's on the screen without having to stare into it. Having a relaxed, wide field of vision helps with many things. Glasses are counterproductive here.