Microsoft Teams Wants to Make a Universal Star Trek Translator a Reality
Since Star Trek’s debut in 1966, many iterations of the franchise have relied on a particularly useful technology that explains how the Enterprise crew can talk to every alien race they encounter: the “universal translator”, a gadget that allows instant communication. despite linguistic (not to mention galactic) differences. Now Microsoft is looking to make universal translator a reality, and it’s using artificial intelligence and Microsoft Teams to do it.
The feature, called Interpreter, was announced today during Microsoft’s 2024 Ignite conference , and is scheduled to begin public testing in Teams “in early 2025.” Similar to dubbing a newscaster speaking a foreign language, Interpreter aims to provide “real-time speech-to-speech translation.” When enabled, Microsoft says you’ll be able to speak in your native language, and whoever you call will hear the language they understand best.
You can see the feature in action above in the video posted by TechCrunch’s Kyle Wiggers . In the demo, Interpreter appears to kick in a few seconds after the caller begins speaking in Spanish, immediately translating what they say into English. Listen carefully and you will hear that the translation is even close to the speaker’s own voice.
This second technological wizardry is made possible by additional AI voice cloning technology, which Microsoft says is voluntary. Other details about Interpreter are sparse at this time, but the company said that at launch Interpreter will support English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Chinese and Spanish. It will also only be available to Microsoft 365 subscribers, meaning free callers won’t be able to use it.
If your preferred language isn’t listed above, you’re not completely out of luck: Microsoft also today announced support for transcribed translations for 31 different languages, meaning 365 subscribers will see their AI-powered Teams transcriptions automatically translate supported languages into their languages. own. Transcriptions will also add support for 20 more languages, although they will not automatically translate into other languages.
In addition to translation services, Microsoft also said that Copilot in Teams will soon be able to understand and answer questions about the visual content displayed on the screen during a call, as well as summarize the contents of shared files without having to open them. Additionally, on Copilot+ PC, call quality will improve slightly with the Super Resolution upscaling feature, bringing us even closer to the viewing screen on a Starfleet ship.