Microsoft Teams Will Now Have Animated Avatars and AI-Generated Tasks

Joaquin Victor Tacla, Tech Times 13 October 2022, 05:10 am

Microsoft unveiled exciting upgrades for its videoconferencing and office collaboration program "Teams" at its Ignite conference this week, as reported first by TechCrunch.

New avatars are now available, and further information was released regarding Teams Premium, a paid feature set for Teams that includes AI-generated tasks and meeting guides, which will be rolled out in December.

(Photo : Microsoft)

Teams Avatars

Teams Premium aims to harmonize the previously confusing price structure, which was divided into numerous tiers. Microsoft anticipates charging $10 per user per month for Teams Premium when it becomes broadly accessible and official pricing will be revealed by that time.

This is less expensive than Zoom Pro, which costs $15 per user per month, but more expensive than the cheapest Google Workspace plan, which is priced at $6 per user per month.

Similar to Zoom's virtual avatars, Team's versions are a part of Microsoft's Mesh technology, which lets users select personalized, animated representations of themselves to appear in Teams meetings.

Users can create up to three avatars to use in a Teams meeting with motions to react to by downloading the Avatars app from the Microsoft Teams app store.

Avatars are promoted by Microsoft's CVP of modern work Jared Spataro as a way to participate in Teams meetings when you need to take a time off from the camera while still appearing to be present.

In a blog post, he claimed that according to their research, 51% of Generation Z plans to work in the metaverse within the next two years.

As more workers return to the office, Microsoft reports that over 270 million individuals use Teams every month. This number hasn't changed since January.

According to the tech giant, organizations interested in testing avatars can sign up for updates on the Teams website if they are not currently a part of the Teams Technical Access Program. Avatars are also accessible in the standard Teams for private preview clients.

AI-Powered Features

Customers of Teams Premium will receive meeting guides that may be modified and managed by an IT team to assist them in choosing the best "meeting experience," such as a client call, brainstorming session, or help desk support.

Users of Teams Premium will also have the option of customizing the meeting environment with lobby logos and brand-specific backgrounds.

The inclusion of AI is one of the most intriguing new Teams Premium additions. Examples include Intelligent Recap, which aims to summarize the key points from Teams meetings, and Intelligent Playback, which creates chapters for Teams meeting recordings automatically.

Personalized Insights also highlights significant audio cues such as when a person's name is mentioned, and Intelligent Search aims to make searching transcripts simpler by suggesting speakers.

Teams Premium will provide meeting attendees with AI-generated assignments as well as real-time translations into 40 spoken languages.

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Written by Joaquin Victor Tacla