Apple Inc. is going for innovation again, and it may affect the online advertisements on your device.

An Apple patent was filed to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office on Jan. 23 titled "Inferring User Mood Based on User and Group Characteristic Data."

According to the patent, an individual's "responsiveness" to specific content delivery comes from a number of influences, such as an "interest in the content, other content the user is currently interacting with, the user's current location," and even the time.

"A way of improving targeted content delivery can be to infer a user's current mood and then deliver content that is selected, at least in part, based on the inferred mood," noted Apple on the patent application. "The present technology analyzes mood-associated characteristic data collected over a period of time to produce at least one baseline mood profile for a user. The user's current mood can then be inferred by applying one or more mood rules to compare current mood-associated data to at least one baseline mood profile for the user."

The Apple patent noted the "baseline mood profile" will help detect the assuming mood of the person using a device.

"Because the accuracy level of a baseline mood profile can change over time and/or based on the information known about the user, a baseline mood profile can have an associated confidence score," the patent continued. "The associated confidence score can represent the accuracy of the baseline mood profile. Furthermore, the associated mood profile can be used in the generation of the inferred mood and/or in calculating a confidence score for the inferred mood."

A detector with the baseline mood profile is a "confidence score" that will serve to perceive the validity of a person's mood.

"In some embodiments, the inferred mood can be sent to a content delivery system where it can be used to select invitational content to send to a requesting user," the patent noted. "For example, a content delivery system can use the inferred mood to assign a user to a mood segment, prioritize targeted content packages assigned to a user, and/or select an item of invitational content based on a match between a mood tag and the user's inferred mood. Additional or alternative uses of the inferred mood are also possible. For example, the inferred mood can be used to enable, disable, set, and/or adjust features on a client device."

Illustrations of the patent were disclosed, notably Figure 4, which depicts the method to establish an inferred mood of a user based on multiple moods detected.

The patent is not final as "various modifications and changes" may be made but without dismissing the intent of the patent.

The patent's inventors have been credited to Michael Froimowitz Greenzeiger, Mehul K. Sanghavi, and Ravindra Phulari, all hailing from California.

Overall, a future iPhone and iPad can distinguish the user's mood. Advertisers can then take advantage to display messages relating to the user's mood.

"Personally, I'd be creeped out by any system that wanted to know my blood pressure, perspiration rate, and overall emotional behavior. In other words, I think it would put me in a bad mood," noted CNET's Lance Whitney.

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