Since the advent of video conferencing last year, many people have had to rethink not only their computers but also their rooms and home office arrangements. Aside from having a competent webcam, things like untidy backgrounds and inadequate lighting contribute to the anxiety of those who are already anxious. The former has been handled by virtual backgrounds, which can sometimes be more distracting, and the latter by automatic lighting adjustment, which is finally arriving to Google Meet on Web browsers.
We have less influence over our working environment at home than we have at work. There are instances when we don’t have much control over what our current conditions are before a video meeting begins, from distractions to room layout to weather conditions. To compensate, video conferencing services have begun to incorporate AI, computer vision, and algorithms, and Google Meet is no exception.
Google first implemented automatic light adjustment to Meet on Android and iOS back in April 2020. The idea is simple: it uses the phone’s sensors to detect lighting conditions and then uses artificial intelligence to alter the video feed to brighten your day. It’s a straightforward function that benefits not only the user but everyone else in the meeting as well.
It’s odd that Google Meet took more than a year to have the same feature on its Web version. Because many PCs and webcams lack ambient light sensors, Google has to rely on even more sophisticated algorithms to discern a low-light environment.
Only Google Workspace, G Suite Basic, and G Suite Business subscribers have access to this functionality, which began rolling out. It is enabled by default after an update, and admins have no control over it. End users, on the other hand, can switch it off manually, and they may want to do so at specific times, such as when there is adequate lighting, because it may hinder the computer’s performance when it is in use.
