Although more than half of the US remote-capable workforce is now engaged in hybrid work, the challenge of feeling disconnected from an organization’s culture and coworkers remains. Better video communications and meetings can help. So, Google put together a roundup of capabilities in Google Meet that help users look and sound their best, express their individuality, and better engage in meetings. 

Look your best

Google have deployed AI in Meet to automate and customize your ability to look your best, whether it’s overcoming the poor lighting or low bandwidth that can be typical of remote working environments. 

  • Portrait touch-up lets you enhance your appearance before joining the meeting with subtle complexion smoothing, under-eye lightening, and eye whitening.
  • Studio look* uses AI to improve your video quality when using low quality webcams. 
  • Studio lighting* simulates studio-quality lighting with AI, which allows you to adjust lighting positions, brightness, and color.
  • Meet can also automatically frame your video before joining a meeting so that you can be seen clearly by all participants.
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Studio look and studio lighting improve your video quality in meetings

Sound your best

Google also enhanced or introduced  features to optimize the audio experience in Meet.

  • Meet removes background noises as well as echos created by spaces with hard surfaces like basements and kitchens.
  • Studio sound* improves poor audio quality from typical bluetooth headsets and the phones of dial-in participants by using AI to recreate higher audio frequencies, making everyone’s voice sound clearer and more natural. 
  • Adaptive audio* helps to alleviate a chief complaint of hybrid work: not enough meeting rooms enabled for video conferencing. Now, your team can join a meeting using multiple laptops in close proximity without awkward echos and audio feedback. Adaptive audio automatically detects the presence of multiple laptops in a room and synchronizes the microphones and speakers for a unified and crisp audio experience.
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Adaptive audio synchronizes laptop microphones and speakers so multiple laptops can join a meeting without conferencing equipment or dedicated rooms

Express yourself

Sometimes part of looking and sounding your best is letting your personality shine. 

Google customer, Rick Paturzo, senior manager of IT at Grubhub, agrees:  “Another feature of Meet that we believed eased our transition was its expansive library of fun reactions and visual effects. Google spent a lot of time creating interesting and quirky virtual backgrounds and filters, and our teams enjoy expressing their creativity and having fun in Meet. These features seem small, but they help make calls more engaging, and our teams feel more connected.”

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Generative backgrounds in Meet lets you create your own with Gemini

  • Filters in Meet provide another option for some fun and creativity. You can join the meeting in character — as a bunny, puppy, or fox. You can also set appearances and styles to suit your mood. 
  • If you prefer to keep it simple, you can blur your background, which separates you from your surroundings while keeping you clear and in focus.
  • Google also offer the unique ability to stack effects, allowing you to use multiple effects together for personalizing your look. 
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Stack multiple effects together to creatively express yourself

Fully participate in the meeting

To fully engage in hybrid meetings, you need the right tools that facilitate verbal and non-verbal interactions for all participants. 

  • A collection of popular reactions in Meet let people engage in the meeting — showing their support, humor, or disappointment — without having to speak. 
  • Polls and Q&As can keep you connected to the meeting, give you additional details, and help check the pulse of meeting attendees. 
  • If you do want to speak up, you can use the hand-raise icon, or simply raise your hand since Meet supports gesture recognition. 
  • These features are also available in our new ultra-low latency live streaming capability for the first 25,000 attendees.
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Encouraging interaction in Meet with reactions, polls, Q&A and more

Bringing your best self with fun and helpful meeting experiences

When combined, all these features let you look and sound your best, express yourself, and show up the way you want to in the world of hybrid work. They can not only improve the productivity of a meeting, but help distributed teams have more fun together and make more meaningful connections.