In March 2025, the New South Wales (NSW) Department of Education discovered that Microsoft Teams had been collecting students' voice and facial biometric data without their consent.

The department was unaware of this feature's activation for a month, during which biometric data was collected from students and staff using school-issued computers.

This data collection was initiated when Microsoft enabled a Teams feature called 'voice and face enrollment' by default, aimed at enhancing meeting experiences with its CoPilot AI tool.

The voice and face enrollment feature creates profiles for participants to improve audio quality and speaker recognition during meetings.

Once the department became aware of the data collection in early April 2025, they quickly disabled the feature and deleted the collected data within 24 hours.

The Department of Education assured that no biometric data is stored by them and that all data collected while the feature was active has been deleted.

A spokesperson for the Department confirmed that the feature allowing biometric data collection was swiftly disabled and all recognition profiles were removed.

A concerned parent raised alarms about the potential lack of awareness among other parents regarding the data collection, despite reassurances from the department about deletion and disabling of the feature.

Shadow education minister Sarah Mitchell criticized the incident as a significant breach of privacy and trust for students and parents, highlighting the need for transparency.

Privacy advocates, including Rys Farthing from Reset Tech Australia, have expressed serious concerns about the unnecessary collection of children's biometric data and called for stronger protections.

In response to the incident, NSW Minister for Education and Early Learning, Prue Car, is investigating the matter and has requested a full briefing from the Department.

The department has not disclosed how many individuals had their biometric data collected or whether they were informed of the data collection.