In its latest attempt to offer more accessibility options to hearing-impaired community members, Instagram has rolled out a new auto-generated captions feature for its video-based content. According to the Meta-owned platform, supported by the new function are 17 different languages, namely English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Arabic, Vietnamese, Italian, German, Turkish, Russian, Thai, Tagalog, Urdu, Bahasa Malaysia, Hindi, Indonesian and Japanese.
Seemingly taking a page from rivals such as YouTube and TikTok, the captions are generated via artificial intelligence (AI), and are made available to its Reels and Remix video features. Instagram says that it plans to continue improving the AI system’s accuracy and also introduce more languages in the near future.
We’re excited to share auto-generated captions for IG Feed videos.
Adding captions makes Instagram more accessible for those in the deaf/hard-of-hearing communities🧏🦻. You will have the option to turn captions on (or off).
Available in 17 languages (with more to come). pic.twitter.com/DiaFa95o7U
— Instagram (@instagram) March 1, 2022
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However, the new feature does not generate translated captions – an ability that has been mostly absent for short video formats on all platforms. Furthermore, keep in mind that captions will only appear on certain Instagram videos, provided that creators have activated the function either during upload or in post.
To activate the auto-generated captions feature as a content creator, tap on the “advanced settings” in the New Post menu and then switch on the “show captions” toggle under Accessibility. For regular users, tap the “three lines” button in your profile tab, select Settings, then to Account, and tap on Captions. From there, tap on the toggle to complete the process.
As usual, be sure to have the Instagram app up to date in order to enjoy the recently rolled out tools and features. That being said, the latest version for the application is 224.1 which is now available to both Android and iOS users across the globe via their respective digital storefronts.
(Source: Instagram [via Twitter] / Techcrunch)
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