Microsoft Teams Adds 3D Avatars So You Can Attend Meetings With Your Camera Off

If there was one thing the pandemic taught us, it’s that people are not always camera-ready. Most online meetings consist of dark screens, a user’s name cast across the screen instead of their visage, and the now go-to excuse of “sorry, my camera isn’t working.”
 
Microsoft has seen how people avoid using their cameras at all costs and has devised a simple way to attend meetings and still show your face. Well, your digital face, that is.

The new avatars are an addition to the Teams app and are part of the company’s Mesh venture that sprung up during the height of the metaverse craze last year. Mesh’s goal was to allow users to project a digital render of themselves and attend boardroom meetings through virtual reality.
 
According to the company’s roadmap, users can customize their avatar’s skin color, eyes, hair, face, and clothes and even add a headset if they wish for an added layer of realism. Microsoft is also working toward the digital twins being able to copy your facial features, but that’s one trip down uncanny valley that might have to wait for now.

For now, it seems like it might be reaching your Teams app in May, so until then, you’ll just have to put up with hiding behind a “broken camera.”
 
 
 
[via Ars Technica and PC Mag, images via Microsoft]