Microsoft’s artificial eye technology ‘Eye Contact’ feature finally hits Surface Pro X

Microsoft’s AI-powered “eye contact” feature for Surface Pro X is finally starting to roll out, months after it was originally announced for the ARM-powered Surface laptop last year.

The new feature is now being rolled out as part of Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 20175, which means it’s probably not too far off a wide release.

According to Microsoft, the new feature relies on the “artificial intelligence capabilities of the Microsoft SQ1 processor” to adjust where the eyes look in a video call or chat to make sure it always appears to be making eye contact with the camera, even if the lens is to the side or if you are looking down on your screen. When enabled, eye contact correction will automatically apply to any app that uses the front camera (such as Zoom, Skype, or Google Meet), although it only works when Surface Pro X is in landscape mode.

An interview with VentureBeat Since last fall, it indicates that the technology involves the unique artificial intelligence capabilities of the ARM-based SQ1 processor, enabling functionality on the Surface X. That means it won’t be available on normal Windows x86 computers, the type of processing underway. here it just consumes too much power to be practical on a normal machine.

If this sounds familiar to you, it’s because Microsoft isn’t the only company working on artificial intelligence correction looks: Apple has been working on a similar feature of “FaceTime Attention Correction” for some time, with early versions of the functionality that they were shown in beta versions of iOS 13 last year before being removed from final release. However, Apple’s iOS 14 website lists the feature, so iPhone and iPad users won’t have to wait too long before they can pretend to pay attention during long FaceTime calls.