Chinese researchers build "mind-reading" device that detects when men watch porn

The new device, as reported by the South China Morning Post, would benefit Chinese internet censors by detecting the brainwaves triggered by lewd content. Pornography is illegal in China.

The prototype device was made “for bad information detection”, said Xu Jianjun, director of the electrical engineering experiment centre at Beijing Jiaotong University, who published the work in Journal of Electronic Measurement and Instrumentation.

It was tested on 15 male university students who would wear the device while sat in front of a computer screen – with an alarm going off when explicit imagery was detected by the brain.

The developers say the new device can automatically adapt to the brainwaves of a human censor, able to filter out other signals that would come from emotions or weariness.