Google Meet is getting in the Halloween spirit

Halloween season is a particularly weird one, and this time of year, even adults can get away with embracing the holiday spirit. If you’ve already outfitted your home with Halloween-themed smart speakers and smart cameras, what’s left but to spread some of that Halloween cheer at the office? Today we’re learning about some of the ways Google Meet is eager to help share in those spooky vibes.

Probably the easiest way to jazz up a video call is with a fresh background, and Meet’s got a few options you can go to there. For starters, Google is making available some new pre-rendered Halloween backgrounds, ready for you to drop right into your next Meet call. And if none of those strike your fancy, you can always use Meet’s Gemini AI tools to generate your own Halloween backdrop.

If changing up your surroundings doesn’t feel like the right move for Halloween, why not get into the spirit yourself? Meet is introducing a couple new options for giving yourself a Halloween-appropriate look, including a new addition to those just-added virtual makeup tools, with a dark-lipstick “goth” option:

That could be a little subtle, though, and if you want to just remove any doubt whatsoever from the minds of everyone you’re on the call with about your Halloween bonafides, look no further than these ghoulish filters:

Let’s just get one thing straight here: You’re probably going to have a little leeway for the rest of the month in getting away with using options like these in all but the most conservative workplaces, but don’t go pressing your luck. Once November rolls around, all bets are off, and it’s back to business as usual.

Google says that its Meet Halloween features will be around for a limited time only, and should be available now for Google Workspace, Google One AI Pro, and Google One AI Ultra customers.