Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft Brings AI-Powered Background Blurring To Skype (betanews.com)
A few months after adding background blurring to its Teams tool, Microsoft has brought the same option to Skype on the desktop. From a report: The feature serves two purposes. Firstly it helps to focus attention on the person that is speaking, but secondly -- and perhaps more importantly -- it hides any untidiness (or secrets) that may be going on behind the speaker. It's another push from Microsoft to move people away from Skype Classic to Skype 8. Background blurring makes use of artificial intelligence to pick out the subject of a video, having been trained to detect hair, hands and arms.
Microsoft has another algorithm so the background blurring could be restored?
I'm guessing there are plenty of governments and government agencies that would like to see more details...
If it's contrast based then there could be problems. I just tried it wearing headphones, and it was blurring them along the sides of my face. Most of the people I meet with wear headsets, so that might get annoying. So I suppose if you have a light skin color and a light background, or a dark skin color and a dark background, then there could be issues. It's not like it's using a kinect or iPhone X style 3D scanner.
Better known as 318230.
This is already common tech in lots of smartphone cameras. When you use portrait mode, it is doing several things and one of them is often the simulation of the bokeh effect you get from good lenses. They are basically artificially blurring the background to simulate the effect and I imagine this is just a video application of the same basic concept. The lenses in most smartphone cameras are too small to have the depth of field necessary to blur backgrounds very effectively optically. It isn't that they are bad lenses, just that the laws of physics prevent them from doing this particular trick very well.
Of course they have to pretend AI is somehow involved so they can punch their buzzword bingo card.
Things like this are notoriously bad at picking out black people. Hopefully they've learned from past mistakes and they've trained the AI to be better.
Looking for a computer support specialist for your small business? Check out
Every startup using skype with sales-forecasts on the "blurred" whiteboard showing aggressive growth may find it much easier to get funding.
And M12 may start making supernaturally good investments.
And they don't even need the details -- just a blurring AI that also returns a single bit: "yup, invest in this one", or "yipes, stay away".
Then how the hell would anyone be able to hold a video call with you?
Not at all, that's the point. I could work from home in my underwear.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
If it's contrast based then there could be problems.
There's a simple solution to all of this. Ahem, my solution, which is by Obfuscant, which is mine, is: don't Skype with secret crap on the wall behind you.
Apologies to Anne Elephant.
Pretty soon anything that runs on a computer or smartphone is going to be called artificial intelligence.