Zoom has announced a feature to prevent participants from hiding their faces in meetings

Zoom has announced a new Intelligent Director feature that will allow more people in medium and large meeting rooms to be present in a meeting, even if they try to hide away from the camera. This is reported by Gizmodo.

Zoom’s software will focus on each participant’s face, display them in a window on the screen, and then track the users’ movements.

The company says the new system avoids the “bowling effect” seen in many large video meetings, where participants sit as far away from the camera as possible. Intelligent Director is available now, but only individually and only after registration.

Currently, the system can track up to 16 meeting participants. The machine learning behind the software can also decide which camera is best to use to track participants – if multiple cameras are installed in a room.

The cameras automatically pick up any figure that has a face or shoulders, even cardboard cutouts of people. At the same time, the system does not collect any biometric data but simply determines whether the people in front of the camera have the necessary proportions.

Minimum specifications require a computer with an Apple M1 chip or an Intel i5 processor. It’s also only supported on Windows and Mac platforms, though Zoom promises wider availability in the future.

We will remind you that last year Zoom activated gesture recognition on PC to add emoji.