Microsoft has had support for using Copilot in Teams Rooms video and/or audio meetings so it could tell which person in the room is speaking and identify them in live transcriptions of the meeting. However, you still needed special microphones to enable this Copilot feature until now.
Today, Microsoft has announced that its Copilot speaker recognition technology will work on all Teams Rooms on Windows devices. It no longer matters what kind of microphone you and your meeting attendees use.
In a blog post, Microsoft stated:
Microsoft’s intelligent speaker recognition analyzes the distinct vocal characteristics of each speaker, such as pitch, tone, and speaking style. We think of it as a voiceprint for each participant, akin to a fingerprint for their voice.
In addition to each speaker being identified in transcripts for Teams Rooms meetings, enabling Copilot speaker recognition technology will also turn off background noise for those speakers so their voices come through much more clearly than normal.
Users can go ahead and set up their own digital voice profile so that Teams Rooms can identify each speaker in a meeting. The Copilot intelligence recap feature can then better label each person"s words in a meeting for transcripts, summaries of meetings. and labeling of any action items for each meeting participant.
Microsoft also says that it has security features in place for collecting the voice and face data used by Copilot for Teams Rooms. It says:
The voice and face data for users is encrypted at rest and in transit and is protected by Microsoft"s security and privacy policies and practices. The voice and face data for users is stored in the same region as their Microsoft Teams data and storage is GDPR compliant. Users can unenroll their voice or face profile at any time. Profiles are automatically deleted when a Teams account is deleted or if not used for one year.
The new voice recognition features will later expand to the Teams desktop apps for companies that allow employees to use their own devices. Teams Rooms on Android will use this feature sometime in 2025.