Image Credits: Microsoft
Among other updates, Windows 11 is getting an AI-enabled eye contact feature today that will always make it look like you’re looking at the screen. Don’t use it.
There is nothing like staring into the soulless AI-enhanced eyes of a presenter during a video conference to make you question the nature of your reality. The presenter’s eyes unflinchingly focus on the screen, with only the occasional glitch demonstrating that there is still a live human being on the other side, likely reading a pre-written presentation word by word.
Microsoft’s Windows chief Panos Panay says it makes the meeting experience “more human,” bui It looks fake. You’re better off using a cartoon avatar instead. And to be clear, there’s no need for this. You’re great the way you are — eyes on camera or not.
(And yes, Apple does this with FaceTime and has for a couple of years now, but it’s a lot more subtle.)
There are some hardware requirements before you can enable this feature. We asked Microsoft PR what those are yesterday. They are still trying to find an answer, so we will update this post once we hear more.