Remote work is becoming more and more prevalent as video and audio quality continues to improve. Team collaboration tools are being used in abundance by teams working remotely and in the office for business meetings.
In order to empower this kind of virtual interaction, many companies and individuals are working to improve video quality through artificial intelligence-enabled features.
Background Blur
Microsoft Teams recently introduced a new feature that has caused quite a bit of stir in the real-time communications community: background blur. Background Blur uses artificial intelligence to identify what is in the background in your video feed and blur it out, so mishaps like a child running around in the background while you’re on the news don’t affect your presentation.
Zoom to Personalize the Feed
Google’s Hangouts Meet Hardware Kit is designed for a conference room scenario, where individuals need to connect and video chat with those in a conference room. It uses artificial intelligence to actively identify and zoom in on the participant that is currently talking to provide a more personalized conversation.
Transcription
Transcription is a topic we have discussed on our blog before - companies are using natural language processing to transcribe conversations. This has the potential to give your teams valuable insights into their meetings, so you can always be aware of what was said and when. Furthermore, with keyword search, teams can actively track when a certain individual said what, so you can organize your conversations in a more productive way.
Understanding Content
Last year, Google demoed their Video Intelligence API. This API is capable of identifying objects in video - down to a daschund walking down the street, and even deeper to identify that what was playing was a commercial.
Similarly, Amazon Rekognition Video, released late last year, is a new video analysis service feature that brings scalable computer vision analysis toS3 stored video and live video streams.
These could both have many applications in video conferences, including identifying when a product is being shown in the video feed, or who is speaking based on facial recognition.
Applying Artificial Intelligence to RTC
Artificial intelligence is being applied to many different areas of real-time communications, into more than just the nitty gritty of optimizing the network. As these services and products get better, we can see remote work as a truly productive and personal way to work.
Our new AI-powered product, Optimize, provides media and network settings that deliver optimal audio and video quality for each device, connection, media and network setup. Sign up for early access here.
