No what you looks are and what others think of your looks, you CAN be smart and good-looking.

That would be the message that one would receive when one stands in from of a mirror that Microsoft has turned up with. Called Microsoft’s Magic Mirror looks just as any other regular mirror about with special qualities that make it a so-called smart mirror. It is able to recognize and greet users and read their emotions. The mirror would also display the weather, time and other information.

“Imagine when you wake up in the morning, you’re able to use the mirror to style your hair, do your make up, and while doing that, you can also view the weather,” Izzat Khair, a member of Microsoft Singapore’s developer experience team explained.

How has Microsoft made this possible?

The answer lies in a small hidden facial-recognition camera in the Magic Mirror that can detect eight human emotions. These human emotions include anger, happiness and surprise.

Allowing it to show app-fed news as well as Facebook and Twitter feeds in a display panel, Microsoft plans to expand the mirror’s features further.

Pointing out that the advertising and marketing industries, for example, could use the technology Khair said that the mirror was still at the demo stage but had real business potential.

“Imagine on the monitor of the mirror, you’re able to play an advertisement. And you have a camera that can snap a photo of the users that are viewing the advertisement,” he said.

He added that the advertisers can then have real time data and information about how viewers reacted to the advertisement generated by the mirror’s facial-recognition features.

InnovFest UnBound 2016, a digital technology conference, to illustrate the changing ways users were interacting with technology was the place where the Microsoft Magic Mirror was displayed and it was one of a number of tech products on display at the fest.

He wanted the country to build an operating system database for 100 million smart objects over the next five years, as the Internet of Things trends took off, said Singapore’s Minister for Foreign Affairs Vivian Balakrishnan in an address at InnovFest.

In addition to working on talent development, research, cyber security and public sector partnership, as part of Singapore’s Smart Nation initiative, Microsoft is also working with the country’s government agencies on boosting the city-state’s IoT ecosystem.

The data processed by the mirror was stored on a private cloud that Microsoft’s programmers could not access, and the data was deleted after seven days, Khair said in keeping with the focus on cyber security.

(Adapted from CNBC)