Introducing profanity filtering control and customization for captions in Microsoft Teams meetings
Author: Chris Sano – Microsoft Teams Blog
“We’ve added a toggle that allows you to turn off the profanity filtering for live captions. This will allow you to view live captions and live transcription without any filtering or masking, displaying every word as-is. Filtering is on by default so if you want to turn it off, you’ll need to do so from the captions and transcription tab in your user settings. This is a user-level preference and is not controlled by the meeting organizer or your tenant admin.”
“We have also added the ability to scroll up through the previous minute of captions that have been displayed in the captions panel. This comes in handy if you missed what was said or if you would like to quickly revisit what was said in the most recent captions.”
Ever wanted to rewind a meeting to grab a client or supervisor’s exact words? Me too. Many corporations blocked Teams meeting recording and transcription features when usage exploded during the Pandemic for a variety of reasons. Global corporations now depend on live captioning and translation features to support remote collaboration with diverse audiences. The ability to screenshot/copy conversation text retroactively during a meeting raises a compliance and eDiscovery risk that should be addressed where live caption/translations are a business requirement.
Teams transcripts have always had the capability to censor profanity. It can be quite amusing to see **** for even mild expletives. My concern is that this functionality kills valuable sensitivity and emotional analytics filters. I frequently use emotional analytics in investigations and early discovery stages to zoom in on key exchanges. Stripping profanity from the enterprise record while under legal hold for hostile workplace EEOC suits could be considered spoliation by an actual attorney instead of just a forensic geek with three decades in the trenches.