We’ve all sat in on enough Zoom and Teams online meetings to know how it works. If cameras are off, folks are doing more than just listening. Cameras on? Sure, there’s some attention being paid. Some. Nvidia Broadcast, the GPU-maker‘s software for live streaming and conferencing, has something that’ll make it even easier to be distracted while you’re on camera.
A distracted Broadcast
Nvidia Broadcast is adding, via its latest update, a feature called Eye Contact. This is an AI-powered function that makes it look as though you’re looking at the camera when you’re not. The feature “…moves the eyes of the speaker to simulate eye contact with the camera” and means that you could work on something completely different and nobody would be the wiser. Not until your crappy conversational skills tell on you, anyway.
That’s not the point of the update, of course. It’s intended for content creators and nervous speakers. Reading a script should, in theory, look less distracted. And speakers who habitually avoid the camera’s gaze will have that problem taken care of by Broadcast automatically.
But since Eye Contact is an experimental AI-powered feature, there might be a little… strangeness. Nvidia has included “…a disconnect feature in case you look too far away, to transition smoothly between simulated and real eyes.” Even then, there could be other unnerving moments when you see Eye Contact in action. It’s not Reptilians. It’s just the AI struggling to keep up.
Nvidia’s software is also getting a new Vignette effect and a couple of other AI-powered processing functions are seeing an upgrade. But being able to get on with your work during an online meeting without being found out? That’s probably worth the effort of convincing the boss to switch to Broadcast entirely.