Microsoft is witnessing a massive surge in the usage of Teams software due to professionals working from home owing to the Coronavirus Pandemic.
As demand rises, the tech gaint has announced a bunch of features for Teams to improve remote meetings. One that will stick is a new “real-time noise suppression” feature that can filter out background noise while on conference calls.
Robert Aichner, manager at Microsoft’s communication division, demonstrated the feature last week to a bunch of journalists. He moved his hand inside a bag of chips while the tool turned on. As he foretold, the tool managed to remove the noise while Aichner spoke.
Microsoft is using “the power of AI” to help focus on what the person is saying instead of the noise around you. If it works as expected, the new Teams feature would likely filter out children and pets making noise at home. Real-time noise suppression won’t come until later this year.
Apart from this, Teams will later get an offline mode for reading chat messages and writing messages without an internet connection. Furthermore, Teams will soon introduce the ability for pop-up chats in a separate window.
Coronavirus Pandemic has forced video conferencing apps and communication tools to step up their game. Recently, Slack, a direct competitor of Teams, launched a significant redesign to its desktop app.
