Google Meet is getting a smarter, sharper facelift designed to make your next video call feel a lot more personal, and less like a screen full of disjointed tiles.
Google announced a sweeping update to its video calling platform called Dynamic Layouts that attempts to reimagine how caller appear and interact during virtual meetings. It’s all part of a push to make hybrid meetings feel more human, with AI-powered visuals and intelligent room detection leading the charge. And hopefully a little less awkward small talk, too.
The most noticeable change comes in the form of Portrait Tiles, a new layout that uses AI to crop out unnecessary background and focus tightly on participants’ faces. It’s meant to distractions and give each person a clearer presence on-screen. Coupled with a revamped tile placement system, calls will use screen real estate more efficiently to get rid of empty space and highlight who’s talking. If someone’s camera is off, Meet will now apply color-sampled backgrounds to their name tiles.
Other updates include an increase in the maximum number of pinned tiles, from three to six, to allow more control over what stays in focus during a call. Large room tiles will also display more prominently when Dynamic Tiles are off, which means better visibility for those on the call. Self-view options will also persist through multiple calls, and there’s a new option to show full videos to others, an important setting for anyone using sign language or alternate forms of communication.
One of the more advanced features, Dynamic Tiles, gives individual tiles to up to three in-room participants. An AI-powered speaker detection system can change focus automatically to whoever’s talking. Paired with the Face Match feature, which helps to label participants joining via Companion Mode, these quality of life updates should help make it a bit easier to understand who’s participating, who’s actively talking, and who’s hanging out in each of those work calls where an email would have sufficed.
The rollout is available to all Workspace customers and personal accounts now.