Smile for the Popsicle

Unilever, the world’s largest ice cream manufacturer (Ben and Jerry’s, Breyers, Good Humor, Klondike, Wall’s), commissioned Sapient Nitro to make a $20,000 touchscreen ice cream vending machine.  It’s called Share Happy and comes with facial recognition software that determines your gender, approximate age, and how much you’re smiling.  Smile broadly enough, and you get free ice cream.  Then it asks if it can use your picture for promotional purposes before sending it to Facebook with its built-in Ethernet, WiFi, or 3G.  It also tells you you’re pretty enough to be a model, then pressures you into taking your top off “for art”.

There’s a longer demo video at the official website and a shorter video below that is creeping me out for reasons I can’t really verbalize.  All I know is, if my picture popped up on a vending machine as I walked past it, I would scream like Homer Simpson and beat it with my purse for about an hour.

[via Engadget and Gizmag]