Will your TV soon be watching you?

New tech could let your TV automatically pause when it can tell you're not watching it.

PredictGaze is a start-up company in the US that specialises in innovative use of facial recognition when it comes to user interface and user metrics. Recently, the company spoke with GigaOm about its plans, as well as releasing a video demonstrating just one of the more consumer applications of its technology: TV that will pause when no one is looking directly at it.

PredictGaze has the advantage of working with older hardware. A VGA camera can be used for control at around the 4-foot mark, with a 4-megapixel camera upping that to 12 feet.

This also means that PredictGaze is perfect for tablets and phones with forward-facing cameras. One of the examples that the company has shown is a tablet logged in to Facebook. When it's handed to a different user, the camera recognises the change and hides personal information.

The company is also ready to circumvent privacy concerns; the image processing is done locally on the device, with only data points, not images, being stored on external servers.

The video showing the live TV pausing can be watched below.