Microsoft adds hybrid meeting features to Teams, including interruption-detecting AI

Microsoft is adding features to Teams meetings to support hybrid office/remote meetings, including an AI-powered "speaker coach" that will notify users who interrupt others. New features in Teams, Office and LinkedIn reflect what the company sees as a permanent shift in work patterns, from being predominantly office-based to a …

[Pascal Monett]

"notify users who interrupt others"

Oh for fuck's sake can we stop with the nanny society ?

Adults know when they interrupt. Adults also know when the interruption is justified. And they should be able to handle when it is not.

Computers are not the answer to everything.

42 is.

Knock it off. I don't need a friggin' AI to tell me when I can speak.

[Cybersaber]

Re: "notify users who interrupt others"

What about people on the Autism spectrum, or other mental issues that aren't doing on purpose or know that it's a problem?

What about people who know full well they're interrupting, but just have trouble breaking bad patterns and would welcome the re-training help?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: "notify users who interrupt others"

Sorry to butt in, I'm on the autism spectrum and sometimes struggle to find an appropriate gap when to start speaking but frankly the feature would annoy the hell out of me.

[Charlie Clark]

Re: "notify users who interrupt others"

I can't agree with your assertion that people know that they're interrupting or that others are too timid or polite to interrupt. Personally, I've no problem with making myself heard but it's well-known that this does not apply to everyone, and this is a major problem with meetings in general, which tend to favour extroverts and sociopaths.

Whether an AI watching people's faces is the correct solution, I'm not so sure. Training people to be more assertive and conveners on reining us loudmouths is probably just as important, but I can see advantages, especially for conveners, in a system that might pick up on some visual clues

[Psmo]

Re: "notify users who interrupt others"

Being fair, I don't see this feature going over in the countries where people tend to use constant-transmission mode.

It makes remote meetings a pain, though.

[DevOpsTimothyC]

If only they could add something useful

Like not crashing regularly, entering login loops, consuming large amount of ram and CPU cycles, prompting "Do you want to replace the version of the file you sent to team A with the version you're sending to team B or do you want additional (#) in the file name

[Peter D]

Re: If only they could add something useful

Making the pub look like a home office would be a welcome feature as would virtual clothes.

[Mishak]

How about some basic features?

Like not mirroring my video so I can read the OBS content I am trying to stream?

[s. pam]

Wot’s a “ Physical meeting room” …?

Yawn for the worst video app on the planet!

These in-features will obviously be for PCs only, as the Mac version of teams is similar to shite on a shingle.

[Warm Braw]

Their own video pane even when in a physically shared meeting space

It will be interesting to see whether that gets to be known as the "Scumbag College" or the "GB News" effect. Regardless, much hilarity will do doubt ensue.

[Ikoth]

To Quote Marvin...

...Sounds ghastly.

[Anonymous Coward]

interruptions not a problem I'd mind having

Meetings I attend often have more tumbleweeds rolling across the silence than people piling on to speak. Maybe I should count my blessings?

[Anonymous Coward]

Here in my car, I am terrified

Enabling people to take part in meetings while they are driving is probably the most stupid idea of the year.

Driving requires that your mental and sensory skills are devoted to the task at hand. Trying to have a meeting at the same time as you are supposedly controlling several tonnes of metal moving at speed in a complicated and unpredictable environment is stupid, pointless and above all, dangerous!

You will either be useless as a member of the meeting because your attention will be focused on the task at hand and not the meeting, or you will end up killing others and/or yourself when the inevitable accident happens.

People shouldn't even contemplate it and Microsoft should be ashamed for directly encouraging this type of utterly irresponsible behaviour. If they do roll this out, I hope the first suit from a bereaved family comes quickly and hits them hard.

[Sandtitz]

Re: Here in my car, I am terrified

"Enabling people to take part in meetings while they are driving is probably the most stupid idea of the year."

They are most likely not getting video feed, just audio.

I do not have a problem being on the (hands-free) phone while driving. I can also converse with other people in the car while driving. I can also listen to talk radio and music while driving. What's the difference?

Perhaps some people can't, but hey, they'll always have the option of not joining a meeting while driving.

[Mobster]

This is all fine and dandy, but do they now allow one to view the participant list *and* chat window at the same time?

[Potemkine!]

What's next? Teams in your bath? Teams in the lavatory? In your grave, just in case? (I would take that one, I don't want to be buried alive)

[big_D]

Can we stop...

with the new features, please!

I want a freeze on new features, until the existing ones work properly and securely!

Word has stopped printing page ranges for our users. Allegedly, a beta version will restore the functionality, but I'm not rolling a fragging beta to all our users, especially not the CEO... Oh, wait, we are already on Office 365, so we are on a rolling beta anyway.

[Sub 20 Pilot]

Fuck the new features...

How about making the bloody thing work on an MS Windows PC without having to wait 5 minutes for the software to open up, meanwhile making all other operations unusable, thrashing the disk, using about 90 % of the memory and running the laptop fan hard enough to heat my house.

If I have to reboot the laptop, it takes an additional 5 minutes of disk churning before you can do anything while this bag of turds is trying to open up, even though after each time it does this I remove it from the MSCONFIG start menu.

Then tells me to open an MS account as it does not recognise the one I eventually use to log on when I do need to use it, leading to another 10 minutes of nothing.

My mother could have come up with a better program and she doesn't even own a fucking PC.

There really does need to be a world wide programme of killing these marketing bullshit fuckers one by one until the rest get the point. Sadly Covid is killing the wrong people.