Artificial Intelligence Mimics Human Social Perception, Opening New Avenues in Neuroscience Research

Recent advancements in artificial intelligence have demonstrated its capacity to analyze and interpret social interactions between individuals in images and videos with a level of accuracy comparable to human perception. A pioneering study conducted by researchers at the University of Turku in Finland, published in the journal Imaging Neuroscience, highlights how models like ChatGPT can assess various social features, including facial expressions, body language, cooperation, and hostility in diverse visual media.

In this investigation, the AI evaluated 138 social traits from numerous videos and photographs, and its assessments were compared against over 2,000 human evaluations. Remarkably, the AI's evaluations closely aligned with human judgments and were even more consistent than those of a single human observer. Postdoctoral researcher Severi Santavirta noted that the AI's evaluations could be considered highly trustworthy, although collaborative human assessments still outperform AI in accuracy.

An important aspect of this research was its exploration of how AI-driven social evaluations can aid neuroscience. By modeling brain networks involved in social perception using functional brain imaging data, researchers found that social assessments made by AI mirrored those derived from human judgments. This suggests AI's potential to facilitate large-scale, cost-effective neuroscience experiments, reducing manual effort and speeding up data processing. For example, what traditionally might require thousands of hours of human work can now be achieved in mere hours by AI.

Beyond research, the capabilities of AI in understanding social interactions have promising applications across various sectors. In healthcare, AI could monitor patient well-being continuously through video analysis. In marketing, it could predict audience responses to audiovisual content, and in security, it could identify abnormal situations via surveillance footage. AI's ability to operate tirelessly around the clock presents a significant advantage for continuous monitoring and analysis.

Overall, this study underscores how artificial intelligence is becoming an essential tool in both neuroscience and practical fields, offering new pathways to understand and interpret complex social behaviors efficiently and reliably.

source: https://medicalxpress.com/news/2025-09-ai-social-situations-similar-humans.html