Skype to offer a lie detector add-on

Sunday, December 17, 2006

Last week Skype announced a new unlimited plan, a new version of the client and several Skype add-ons. Now there is another interesting Skype add-on that the company will offer: a lie detector. Launch date and price of the lie detector have yet to be announced but it seems interesting.

The technology used by this Skype add-on is the KishKish Lie Detector. It is a software developed by BATM and it’s not the first time the two companies work together. KishKish already provided other Skype add-ons (call recorded and voice mail for example).

The KishKish Lie Detector works by analyzing audio streams during Skype calls to look for stress patterns in the human voice. The Skype add-on bases its analysis on the first ten seconds of the call once the lie detector is activated. In that short span of time the Skype add-on is able to trace a profile of the voice that will be used to analyze the stress.

Once the system is calibrated the lie detector will show on the Skype add-on interface four indicators about the stress level of the speaker. They go from a simple indicator of the stress status of the speaker to a meter of exactly how much he or she is stressed.

Instead of simply focusing on the percentage the lie detector will be useful to know in which occasion the speaker changes his state. The only problem with this Skype add-on will be to determine if the speaker is nervous on his own. For this reason the lie detector is a tool that must be paired with an independent “analysis” of the speaker made by the caller.

To help in this phase the lie detector will also be able to record the call to analyze them later. To avoid any legal problem that may arise the lie detector automatically informs the speaker that his voice pattern is being analyzed. So if the speaker does not want to be analyzed by a lie detector the caller just has to deactivate the add-on.