A lot of us are spending more time on video calls than ever before… and perhaps noticing that it can be a lot tougher to maintain eye contact than in face-to-face meetings. If you’re looking at the picture of the person you’re talking to, then you’re probably not looking directly at the camera… so it appears you’re not looking at the person you’re talking to.
Microsoft has a fix for that.
The latest Windows 10 Insider Preview build has a new “Eye Contact” feature that “helps to adjust your gaze on video calls.”
So far the feature is only available for a single device — the Microsoft Surface Pro X.
That’s probably because Microsoft’s tablet has an ARM-based Microsoft SQ1 processor with integrated AI (artificial intelligence) processing capabilities, and Eye Contact uses AI to basically re-draw your eyes so that you appear to be looking straight at the camera when you’re not.
There’s no word on if or when Eye Contact may be available for other Windows devices with different processors. But I guess now there’s at least one other reason to buy the Surface Pro X beside long battery life.
Microsoft notes the feature also only works when you’re in landscape mode. But it should work with any app that uses the front camera, whether it’s Skype, Zoom, Google Hangouts, or something else.
Other new features in Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 20175 include improvements for pinning sites in the Edge web browser, support for resetting Universal Windows Platform apps via PowerShell, some new icons, and a number of bug fixes.
This reminded me of the mirror hack the DIY Perks guy did, but with more AI and less construction. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2AecAXinars
Neat. Now I can place halves of ping pong balls over my eyelids and people might actually be convinced I’m paying attention!