Apple's iPhones could reportedly be your own personal psychologists real soon

Apple is reportedly working on a set of new projects under which the Cupertino-based company is developing new technologies which will help it detect stress, depression, anxiety, and cognitive decline. The report comes via Wall Street Journal and according to it, Apple is trying to design algorithms that should reliably help it detect and diagnose such mental health issues using the biometric user data.

The projects are being carried out in partnerships with the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and biotech firm Biogen. With the former, Apple is working on the algorithm that will detect stress, depression and anxiety, and the project is purportedly codenamed "Seabreeze". On the other hand, the project with Biogen is allegedly codenamed "Pi" and in this case, the tech giant is working on mild cognitive impairment.

Apparently, the new algorithm will take such diagnostic decisions by analysing the users' facial expressions, their way of speaking, the frequency and speed of their walks, their sleep patterns, and finally, their heartbeat and respiration rates. That's not all though as the technology would also apparently also examine the frequency of typing errors and also the kind of texts that users write, and perhaps more.

In order to avoid data privacy-related concerns, no analysis of the data will reportedly be sent to Apple's servers and everything would be done on the users' devices themselves.

Source: WSJ