The iOS Skype app has a new feature that lets you blur your background.
The iPad and iPhone Skype app has a new update today, with a screen-blurring feature added. When on video call, users can choose to blur their backgrounds for privacy or aesthetic reasons.
The technology behind the blurring feature is AI that has been taught to recognize the human form. The camera detects the face, as well as the arms, hands and hair and blurs out everything else in the picture.
This can save the Skype user from showing his or her messy room or to hide a whiteboard business plan that’s behind them, for example. Background blurring is similar to the one Microsoft Teams uses, where a ‘bokeh’ effect is applied. Bokeh was an exclusive feature in smartphone cameras but now it’s accessible in live video streams.
For the desktop version users can enable the setting in the ‘blur my background’ option.
