Microsoft Expands AI-Powered Speaker Recognition to All Teams Rooms on Windows Devices

Key Takeaways:

• Microsoft’s speaker recognition technology is now accessible for all Teams Rooms on Windows devices.
• The technology leverages voice isolation to suppress background noise and ensures accurate speaker attribution in meeting transcripts.
• Microsoft emphasizes the encryption of users’ voice and face data as well as maintaining strict security and privacy measures.

Microsoft’s AI-powered speaker recognition technology is now available for all Teams Rooms on Windows devices. The company announced yesterday that this feature is no longer limited to Microsoft Teams Rooms equipped with intelligent speakers.

Microsoft highlighted several advantages of the speaker recognition capability in Teams Rooms on Windows devices. This feature leverages voice isolation to suppress background noise during video calls and meetings. Additionally, speaker recognition enables intelligent recap and Copilot for Microsoft 365, ensuring that speakers’ contributions are accurately attributed in the meeting transcript.

“With speaker recognition, Teams Rooms can identify speakers during live transcription in shared meeting rooms, ensuring clear and precise voice capture for every participant. This allows you to effortlessly track who said what during the meeting through the meeting transcript and to enable intelligent meeting recap and Copilot,” Microsoft explained.

How to get started?

Microsoft notes that users can easily set up their voice profiles in the Teams desktop app on Windows and macOS devices. However, IT administrators must first use Teams meeting policy and PowerShell scripts to enable voice enrollment for end users. Microsoft has provided a couple of enrollment scripts to configure voice profiles, speaker recognition, and the AI-powered Copilot assistant within their organizations.

Microsoft noted that expanding speaker recognition technology to additional Teams Rooms would benefit commercial customers worldwide. However, keep in mind that the quality might not match that of dedicated intelligent speaker devices.

“Intelligent speakers are designed with multiple microphones to provide high-quality audio, maximizing accuracy in recognition and transcription and boasting an industry-leading reduction of word error rate. In rooms where top-quality transcription and attribution are imperative, it’s worth it to assess the benefits of integrating intelligent speaker hardware certified for Teams,” Microsoft added.

Speaker recognition coming to Teams Rooms on Android devices in 2025

Microsoft emphasizes that users’ voice and face data is encrypted both at rest and in transit, which is protected by robust security measures and privacy policies. The company ensures this data remains confidential and is not used for any other purposes. Users also have the option to unenroll their profiles at any time.

This new AI-powered speaker recognition feature is now available for all existing microphones on Teams Rooms on Windows. Later this year, Microsoft plans to expand this capability to Teams desktop for bring-your-own-device (BYOD) meeting spaces, with Teams Rooms on Android devices to follow in 2025.