Google Meet now uses AI to detect when you raise your hand

Earlier this year, Google announced its plan to add AI-powered hand raise gesture detection to Meet. The announcement came in late March at BETT 2023, the world’s biggest educational technology exhibition. A few months later, the said feature is rolling out to users. Once available, Google Meet can detect when you physically raise your hand.

Google Meet gets AI-powered hand raise gesture detection

Google Meet is one of the most widely used remote collaboration and communication tools. It offers a slew of features to facilitate efficient remote communication for businesses and improve the productivity of employees. The Hand Raise tool allows participants in a videoconference to indicate that they have something to say or a question to ask without interrupting the active speaker.

Currently, it is a button in the bottom toolbar. When clicked, other participants see a tiny icon depicting a raised hand within your video tile on their screens. Google is giving Meet users more ways to do that with AI-powered gesture detection. The videoconferencing service can now detect when you physically raise your hand and convey the message to other participants.

As you might expect, this feature requires you to enable the camera. Your raised hand must be away from your face and body and visible to the camera for AI to detect it. To avoid false detections, Google Meet will show a “Raising your hand” progress bar on the screen, with a raised hand reported to other participants only after the progress is completed. If it was unintentional, you can quickly lower your hand to cancel it.

This gesture detection doesn’t work when you are an active speaker, which is an expected behavior. Since you are already speaking, you might raise your hand to convey a point to other participants in the meeting. Google Meet will resume gesture detection for a hand raise as soon as you stop speaking. The existing toolbar button for the feature isn’t going away.

The new feature is now rolling out to users

Google has started rolling out this AI feature for Meet. It expects to complete the rollout within the next few weeks. The feature will be available to all Google Workspace Business Plus, Business Standard, Enterprise Essentials, Enterprise Plus, Enterprise Standard, Enterprise Starter, Education Plus, the Teaching and Learning Upgrade customers, and Google Workspace Individual subscribers. While there is no admin control, the feature is Off by default. You can turn it On from More options > Reactions > Hand Raise Gesture.