OpenAI capabilities are now powering Microsoft Teams Premium

The service is available for a limited time for $7 (dollars) a month but will shortly increase to $10 a month. The main attraction seems to be a feature called intelligent recap.

This advancement produces automatically-generated meeting notes, recommended tasks, and personalized highlights to help users get the information most important to them, even if they miss a meeting. The goal is to improve efficiency for busy employees.

Make every meeting more intelligent, personalized, and protected with Teams Premium—available now. Learn more: https://t.co/aYYrYIPfHC

— Microsoft Teams (@MicrosoftTeams) February 1, 2023

“With a 252 percent increase in weekly time spent in meetings in the first two years of the pandemic, we needed to find ways to “work smarter, not harder.” Both the pace of work and the amount of information needed to sift through have grown exponentially, especially with meetings,” explained Herskowitz.

“There’s a ton of time-consuming administrative work during meetings, like taking notes, figuring out important takeaways, and capturing the right action items and owners.”

Who will the new AI features be open to?

In addition, some much beloved Microsoft Teams options are becoming available only for Premium users. These include live translated captions, custom organization Together Mode scenes, and a number of virtual appointments features

More appealing to businesses are advanced meeting protections that boast a number of safeguards like watermarking and labeling sensitive content during meetings. From now on Microsoft Teams Premium users will also have the ability to restrict users from recording meetings and copying text from the meeting chat in order to “deter leaks” or keep discussions private.

“As meetings have shifted to virtual and hybrid, it has created a new set of information protection challenges for organizations. Sensitive and confidential business conversations like board meetings, financial discussions, or undisclosed product reviews now happen through Teams meetings,” noted Herskowitz.

“While setting up a Teams meeting is a quick and simple process, it’s critical for sensitive meetings to have an added layer of protection to help ensure the content and information remain secure.”

Finally, the advanced service also includes webinars so users can host events with registration waitlists, virtual green rooms, and customizable start and end times. In December of 2022, Microsoft launched a 30-day trial of Teams Premium as a preview of the features available now.