Importantly, your talking animal avatar can wear either a hoodie or a t-shirt.Īt launch, animals are the only avatars available, but it’s easy to imagine other kinds of avatars that might get added (putting this completely unfounded prediction in writing now: Zoom partners with Universal Pictures, your boss turns into a Minion). If you select either the “Choose Virtual Background” or “Choose Video Filter” option, you’ll see a tab that says “Avatars,” which will help you complete your inter-species transformation.Īvatars are compatible with virtual backgrounds. To use the feature, click the caret (^) symbol next to the start/stop video button.

On the flip side, imagine you’re a high school teacher and you log on to teach, but instead you find a sea of 25 bunny rabbits staring back blankly at you as though you’re a character in a pandemic-era reimagining of “Donnie Darko.”Īvatars will be available on both Windows and macOS desktop devices, as well as iOS mobile devices, so long as you’re running Zoom version 5.10.0 or higher (sorry, Android users who want to be horses).

These avatars are intended to give the Zoom fatigued among us a way to communicate body language and facial expressions without actually appearing on camera. That would’ve really put them in the dog house. The Avatars feature recognizes the shape of your eyes, nose and mouth to mirror your head movements and facial expressions, but Zoom is quick to note in its announcement that the feature does not use facial recognition, nor does it store biometric data. Zoom is introducing a feature today that lets you show up to your work meetings as a bunny rabbit (or a dog, a fox, a panda, a horse - you get the point).

A picture’s worth a thousand words, but this image of Zoom’s newest feature can be summed up in just one: what?

Zoom earth virtual background