Emotiv puts brain-computer interface apps in the browser

By Inside BCI · Edited by Velco Dar · October 23, 2026

Someone with an Emotiv headset can now fly a neon spaceship through an asteroid field from a browser tab. The first level steers with head movement. The second runs on a mental command, a thought pattern the user trains the software to recognise.

The game is one of seven apps on emotiv.dev, a site Emotiv announced this week. The San Francisco company makes EEG headsets and earbuds, which read the brain’s electrical activity through the scalp or ear.

What the site offers

Mind Move is a training hub where users record and manage mental commands that the other apps reuse. Mind Weather shows a sky that shifts with the wearer’s engagement, alongside Emotiv’s estimates of attention and stress. Alpha Mirror shows the alpha rhythm, a brainwave that strengthens when the eyes close. Orbit Runner and Motion Viewer use the headset’s motion sensor, and a raw EEG viewer, which requires a licence, shows the signal from every electrode.

The apps run in the browser but reach the headset through Cortex, a service inside the Emotiv Launcher desktop app, which has to be installed and running. Users sign in to the Launcher with an Emotiv account, register their own Cortex app with Emotiv, and enter its keys in the site’s settings, where they stay in the browser. EEG and anything derived from it stays on the user’s computer. The previews on the site run on simulated signal. A Learn section teaches developers Emotiv’s Cortex programming interface, and a Build section is marked as coming soon.

What using a real headset requires

Using the apps with a real headset requires Emotiv’s AI agreement and the user’s consent to Emotiv Cloud and EmotivIQ, given in their Emotiv account. EmotivIQ is Emotiv’s AI analysis service. It runs in Emotiv’s cloud on models trained on EEG recordings, including one Emotiv calls its Large Brain Model.

Under Emotiv’s end user licence agreement, updated on 5 August, access to EmotivIQ depends on users authorising Emotiv to pool their pseudonymised brain data, filed under a code number kept apart from their name, to train, evaluate, refine and commercialise the model. The agreement also lets Emotiv apply newly developed algorithms to recordings users have already stored in its cloud. Its privacy policy, effective 6 August, and its terms of use, updated on 16 September, let Emotiv license the trained model’s parameters, weights or API outputs to commercial, enterprise and research partners. Emotiv says it does not sell raw neural data or personal information, and describes licensed model outputs as aggregated or de-identified.

Switching EmotivIQ off stops new data going into training. Data already built into a trained model stays there, because Emotiv says individual contributions cannot be separated from a model once training is complete. Its privacy policy commits it to retraining or machine unlearning, techniques that remove a person’s influence from a model, at the next full training cycle where technically feasible. Under its terms of use, withdrawing consent or closing an account does not require Emotiv to retrain, alter or delete any model that already includes the user’s data.

Emotiv’s August software update added the cloud and AI data consent notice, and an October update brought EmotivIQ to EmotivPRO, its recording software. Users who complete the consent process by 30 November keep EmotivIQ’s standard tier free permanently, with 100 usage credits a month. Emotiv also offers a Local Only setting, which keeps processing and storage on the user’s device, without Emotiv Cloud or EmotivIQ.

Emotiv excludes Maryland residents from model training, under a policy covering states whose laws limit sensitive-data processing to what is strictly necessary or ban its sale. It says it uses differential privacy, which adds statistical noise during training so the model reveals little about any one person, tests the model against attempts to extract individual users’ data, and contractually bars any recipient from attempting to re-identify users. For Emotiv Studio, its platform for consumer and product research studies, use of pseudonymised data to improve Emotiv’s models is required and cannot be switched off.

Why it matters

Emotiv says its technology is used by more than 4,000 institutions and that its EEG archive holds 197.5 million channel-minutes, each a minute of signal from one electrode. Dcode.AI, a company also led by Emotiv’s chief executive, Tan Le, describes the Large Brain Model as built on that researcher-collected archive and takes requests for API access to the model. The browser apps keep brain data on the user’s computer. Connecting a real headset to them still requires the EmotivIQ consent, which authorises Emotiv to pool pseudonymised data from its own apps and cloud for training.

Emotiv’s treatment of brain data has changed since 2023. Its June 2023 privacy policy said EEG data on its own was not personal information. Several states, including Colorado, California and Connecticut, have since added neural data to their privacy laws, and the current policy treats EEG data as sensitive personal information and neural data under those laws. In August 2023, Chile’s Supreme Court ordered Emotiv to delete the brain data of former senator Guido Girardi, who had used its Insight headset.

Emotiv’s terms bar customers from using its products to infer the emotions or mental states of people at work or in education, except for medical or safety reasons, citing the EU AI Act.

Not disclosed

Emotiv has not said how many users have consented to model training, which partners license the model, or what EmotivIQ will cost after the free offer. It has not said whether the Launcher sends data from emotiv.dev sessions to its cloud; its privacy policy says it collects EEG data whenever an app built on its platform is used by someone signed in to an Emotiv account. It has also not said how Dcode.AI and Emotiv divide rights to the model, or whether any retraining or unlearning has taken place.

What to watch

Whether Emotiv names any licensee of the Large Brain Model.

Whether Emotiv reports how many users consented by the 30 November offer cut-off.

Whether the Build section opens to outside developers, and on what data terms.

Whether state privacy regulators examine free features offered in exchange for consent to use neural data.

Sources

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Cross-reference to prior InsideBCI coverage:

news Emotiv emotiv-dev EmotivIQ Large-Brain-Model Dcode-AI Tan-Le Cortex-API EEG consumer-BCI neural-data consent AI-training