This divisive Microsoft Teams feature is coming to Zoom

Zoom follows Microsoft Teams by unveiling divisive avatar feature

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As part of its filter collection,video conferencing serviceZoom has launched virtual avatars into beta worldwide.

Announcingthe new feature on its blog,Zoomsaid that the avatars would make meetings “more flexible and fun”, allowing users to “display [their] ‘virtual you’”.

The “original and fun” feature comes relatively hot on the heels ofMicrosoft Teamsadding similar,albeit better looking avatarsto users in the Technical Access Program in October 2022, that in turn are reminiscent of those seen in Meta’s Horizon Workroomsworkplace metaverse.

Why?

In its post, Zoom claims that avatars help people appear present and engaged, allow them to present “more dynamically”, and enable “fun activities” in thehybrid workplace.

While its possible thatusers of the service who prefer to keep their cameras offmight find avatars a suitable middle ground, others more ambivalent to the concept of “workplace fun” might struggle.

Figuring out ways to make meetings more painful seems to be a top priority for the largestcollaboration toolproviders out there.

In December 2022,TechRadar Proreported thatGoogleMeet deemedthree bizarre face filtersready for human consumption, following Zoom’s own reveal of similar filters in March that year.

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Zoom’s new animated avatars are the stuff of nightmares>Microsoft Teams is adding one of the worst Zoom features>We’ve also listed the best productivity tools right now

However, innovations to video calling could pose far more dangerous problems than embarrassing filters. AsTechRadar Proreportedin November 2022, Zoom announced at its annual Zoomtopia event that the app was announced to be coming to “all new Tesla models soon”.

Avatars for Zoom were just one of four features recently announced by the company. Following in the footsteps ofTeams Premium, it now offers customizable setting templates for meetings based on size and situation, including large meetings and classrooms, to make setting up meetings easier.

Threaded conversations, a staple of Slack (and now also Google Chat) are now also available, alongside a roll out of the Q&A feature, previously reserved for webinars, to all meetings, if enabled by an administrator.

Luke Hughes holds the role of Staff Writer at TechRadar Pro, producing news, features and deals content across topics ranging from computing to cloud services, cybersecurity, data privacy and business software.

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