It’s finally happening: Users of Microsoft Teams can now enable custom background images without needing a green screen.

“Today, we are announcing the rollout of new custom background effects in Teams,” Microsoft corporate vice president Jared Spataro writes in the announcement post. “It’s all about enabling you and your team to work productively, collaboratively, and with everyone’s well-being in mind.”

Custom background effects work as one would expect: You’re allowed to any image of your choice, and Microsoft is now providing several collections of backgrounds from which to choose as well. Spataro says that Teams uses “a highly trained model that differentiates the subject from their background and can impose a custom background over everything else, making it easy and fast to start expressing yourself in all your meetings.”

Additionally, Microsoft is announcing some new features for the free version of Teams. They include:

Schedule meetings in advance. Now, even free version users can schedule meetings and send out invitations in advance. Previously, only “Meet Now” was available.

Live captions. Teams free users can now turn on live captions during their calls and meetings. It’s currently available as a preview in U.S. English.

Tagged with Microsoft Teams