Will Microsoft Teams spy on you? That suggests a Microsoft patent

If you use Microsoft Teams and value your privacy, pay attention to this. The well-known Microsoft app for online meetings and teamwork could soon integrate a technology capable of detecting if someone is not paying attention in meetings, according to a recently published Microsoft patent.

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The patent describes an AI-based system to determine if someone is not paying attention during a meeting. The system gathers information from the meeting, such as what is being said and shown, who is in the meeting, and how they are using their devices. It then checks if someone is not paying attention by looking at their camera or what they are doing on their device. If the system detects that someone is not paying attention, it will send them a message to regain their attention.

The system also receives a signal that the person has returned to the meeting and displays a summary of what has been missed, similar to the Intelligent Recap feature of Microsoft Teams, which shows a meeting summary and a series of task suggestions. Currently, Microsoft Teams does not have any technology on the platform capable of detecting if users are paying attention in meetings, although administrators can monitor user activity in Teams through other means.

However, the document argues that technology should not be used to demonstrate employees’ lack of activity, but to provide essential highlights for those participants who attend multiple meetings in the same day: “It is necessary to improve systems and methods for managing meetings intelligently, monitoring their content and providing highlighted information that allows retaining context when necessary”.

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For now, it is only a patent, so this new technology for Microsoft Teams does not necessarily have to be materialized in the future. Even with Microsoft’s alleged good intentions, this new technology could pose various moral and ethical problems in an already difficult work context for many, especially for those who work in the technology industry.