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

Practically --

I feel hardware technology can improve further to allow under-the-LED-display cameras .... so that we can actually look at both the camera and the screen at the same time.

(There are fingerprint sensors under mobile screens now ...and I think even some front facing cameras are being built in without sacrificing a punch hole / pixels. There is scope to make this better and seamless so we can have multiple cameras if we want behind a typical laptop screen or desktop monitor.)

This would make for a genuine look-at-the-camera video whether we are looking at other attendees in a meeting or reading off our slide notes (teleprompter style).

There would be no need to fake it.

More philosophically --

I don't quite like the normalization of AI tampering with actual videos and photos casually -- on mobile phone cameras or elsewhere. Cameras are supposed to capture reality by default. I know there is already heavy noise reduction, color correction, auto exposure etc ... but no need to use that to justify more tampering with individual facial features and expressions.

Videos are and will be used for recording humans as they are. The capturing of their genuine features and expressions should be valued more. Video should help people bond as people with as genuine body lanuage as possible. Videos will be used as memories of people bygone. Videos will be used as forensic or crime scene evidence.

Let us protect the current state of video capture. All AI enhancements should be marketed separately under a different name, not silently added into existing cameras.

I agree with your philosophical stance, in general, but this particular use case is one that I've been wanting for years and where I think altering the image can be in some ways more "honest" than showing the raw camera feed.

With an unfiltered camera, it looks like I'm making eye contact with you when I'm actually looking directly at my camera, and likewise it looks like I'm staring off to the side when I'm looking directly at your image in my screen.

A camera centered behind my screen might be marginally better in that regard, but it still wouldn't look quite right.

What I'd really like to see is a filter for video conferencing that is aware of the position of your image on my screen, and modifies the angle of my face and eyes to more closely match what you would actually see from that perspective (e.g. it would look like I'm making direct eye contact when I'm looking at/near the position of your eyes on my screen).

You could imagine this working even for multiple users, where I might be paying attention to one participant or another, and each of their views of me would be updated so that the one I'm paying attention to can tell I'm looking directly at them, and the others know I'm not looking directly at them in that moment.

Would be funny if everyone on your screen gave a side eye to the bottom right corner where the currently speaking person is.

Jokes aside, I think you're absolutely right. Online interactions have dynamic geometry, so mounting a camera behind a screen will just not cut it, unless the entire screen is a camera. Also, some people might prefer projecting/receiving no eye contact at all, at times, in situations. And vice versa.

Philosophical stance here is purely traditionalist, it decides on behalf of people. What people would like to use, that should exist. "Videos are and will" is a strange claim, assuming its claimer has neither control over it nor any sort of affirmation that it is going to be true.

Once we have technology to put a camera under a screen without sacrificing display quality ... we will not stop at one camera.

There will be an array of cameras covering say every 2x2 inch square of your screen.

Just see how many cameras are on todays phones. Same can happen with new camera tech too.

Also there will be a huge commercial driver to put multiple cameras under the screen -- all apps and marketers can track your precise gaze. Ads will pause unless you are actually watching them. I will hate it but it feels inevitable.