Microsoft, added AI-based noise suppression to "Skype" to eliminate all sounds except speech.

Added suppression function to eliminate all sounds except sound in "Skype"

On February 22nd (local time), Skype, owned by Microsoft, announced the addition of a new noise cancellation function to "Skype". The "Skype" application for the Windows/Mac version is released in phases. It cannot be used on Web and mobile versions now, but it is being used in mobile versions in the future.

The new noise cancellation feature was originally developed for "Microsoft Teams" and is designed to eliminate all sounds except the sound of the meeting. So far, the noise cancellation function can only eliminate simple and modal sounds such as the sound of fans. In contrast, the new noise cancellation function can also eliminate keystroke sounds of keyboards, smash the sound of food bags, and bark of dogs.

To use the new noise cancellation feature, open the Settings dialog box and set the noise cancellation option added to the audio area of the audio / video screen to high. If you do not add the noise cancellation option, please be patient until the new feature arrives.

This technique is realized by using a deep neural network trained by machine learning (ML) with 760h speech and 180hr noise data. The noise data uses 150 samples such as keystroke tone, stream tone and snoring of the keyboard, and the voice data uses more than 10 languages including tone language. In addition, emotional samples such as laughter and calls are also used. At the same time, considering the differences of different sounds in the environment, more than 3000 of the actual rooms and more than 115000 of the virtual rooms are trained.