Government Teams users face another ******* month of filtered captions

Microsoft Teams will persist in filtering profanity in captions by default for certain government users until the end of August, a month later than originally scheduled. In 2023, the tech giant introduced a toggle controlling the profanity filter in Teams Live Captions, which was enabled by default and replaced offensive words with asterisks.

This filter replaced a user-level preference with something controlled by the meeting organizer or tenant administrator. Microsoft altered its stance earlier this year and decided to disable the filter by default, ensuring captions accurately reflect spoken content, supporting accessibility needs, and aligning with regional regulatory requirements, such as those in the EU.

Users could still turn the filter back on. The change affected newly initialized users and those who had not configured the setting themselves, meaning Live Captions might display unfiltered language. The filter indicated that Teams was doing more than simply converting speech to text, leaving users to question why censorship was the default.

In April, Microsoft added this change to its roadmap and targeted a June rollout. However, it has now reached general availability, except for certain government environments. The Government Community Cloud (GCC), GCC High, and Department of Defense users experienced a one-month delay, with completion now set for the end of August instead of July.

This means that censored content will remain in those environments by default for a little longer. While we cannot speculate about the reasons behind the delay, we inquired with Microsoft for an explanation. In the meantime, affected users must wait a few more weeks before Live Captions confirms what they heard in some of the more colorful government calls.