Google Meet for Web Gets Automatic Brightness Feature to Improve Visibility During Video Calls

Google Meet for Web can detect when someone is underexposed due to bad lighting.

By Nithya P Nair | Updated: 21 September 2021 11:57 IST

Google Meet for Web Gets Automatic Brightness Feature to Improve Visibility During Video Calls

Google warns enabling automatic light adjustment on Meet may slow down the device

Highlights

Google Meet can now detect when a user is underexposed
New light adjustment feature is only available on desktop and iOS devices
The feature requires a 64-bit operating system

Google Meet is bringing a new feature to correct poor lighting during video calls. Following the introduction of a low-light mode on mobile last year, the internet giant has now added a new feature that automatically detects when a Web user appears underexposed during a video call and enhances the brightness of their device to improve visibility. There's no admin control for the new feature and users will be able to switch it off. Google says that the enabling light adjustment may slow down the device of the user.

Google announced the arrival of the new feature via a blog post. This setting is only available on desktop and iOS devices when using Google Meet for Web. Users can check for the automatic video lighting adjustment update by heading to More > Settings > Video > Adjust video lighting from your computer. When video lighting adjustment is on, Google Meet can detect if the user is underexposed during a video call and can automatically enhance the brightness of their device to improve visibility for others. If the user is underexposed and the computer supports automatic recommendations, then Meet will prompt to turn the automatic video lighting adjustment feature.

Users can also turn off video lighting adjustment because having it enabled might affect the speed of the computer. Google says users may want to turn this feature off to allow other apps to run faster. According to its support documents, the automatic video lighting adjustment feature is available to all Google Workspace customers, as well as G Suite Basic and Business customers.

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The new feature started rolling out on Monday, September 20, and will be made available to all users in the coming weeks. However, the automatic video lighting adjustment feature requires a 64-bit operating system. It demands Chrome version M90 or above on Windows, Mac, or Linux; version M90 or above on Chrome OS; and Edge (Chromium) 90 or above on Windows or Mac with hardware acceleration enabled and WebGL.

Google Meet last year added a low-light mode to the Google Meet iOS and Android mobile apps using its AI technology. The AI automatically adjusts the video to make users more visible to other participants in sub-optimal lighting conditions. Similarly, to limit interruptions during a video meeting, Meet has added a feature to filter out background distractions through the AI noise cancellation feature.

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Further reading: Google Meet, Google Meet automatic brightness feature, automatic video lighting adjustment, Google Meet new features, Google Meet update

Nithya P Nair

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Nithya P Nair is a journalist with more than five years of experience in digital journalism. She specialises in business and technology beats. A foodie at heart, Nithya loves exploring new places (read cuisines) and sneaking in Malayalam movie dialogues to spice up conversations. More