Was on some United flights recently with their new seatback media systems. The user experience is much better than Delta’s, but also, they actively harvest your information at your seat to build a “profile” on you, they even ask you to choose the type of flight profile you want like “relax” or “fun” etc. and it modifies the content filters for you.

The kicker though, was on the last flight, when the lighting was just right that I noticed they have a pinhole camera installed on the lower left of the display, along with some IR blasters to power a proximity sensor around a software button.

Blasters likely produce enough light that the camera can see you even when the screen is off/cabin is dark. So they’re likely building passenger profiles with visual data now as well, it’d be trivial to do facial recognition of “happy, sad, sleepy, etc” on top of capturing your movement in the seat. Did you just use your phone? Did you use the seatback screen? Are you reading a book? What food did you choose?