Instagram is finally catching up to quite a useful feature that TikTok has had since last April: auto-generated captions to videos in your Insta feed, reports The Verge.
Instagram catches on with TikTok with auto-generated video captions
Instagram head Adam Mosseri shared the news about the long-awaited feature. For comparison, rival TikTok has had auto-captions since last April. The auto-captions on Instagram will be on by default for content creators on the social media platform.
Before this change, creators had to manually add captions to their videos, and the process was quite time-consuming. Now, with the new update, the captions will be generated automatically. With this change, Instagram becomes more accessible to users who are hard-of-hearing or Deaf but not only to them but also to anyone who wishes to watch Instagram videos without sound.
It’s a long time coming, but we’re excited to share a new tool that empowers those in the deaf and hard-of-hearing communities.
Videos on Instagram will now have auto-generated captions, where you have the option to turn them off or on. pic.twitter.com/DNyzcdiPSU
— Adam Mosseri (@mosseri) March 1, 2022
At launch, the auto-captions will be available in select languages, and at first, the quality of them (the accuracy, pretty much) won’t be perfect as the AI will need to learn and improve over time. However, in the coming months, Instagram will be expanding the auto-generated captions to more languages, as well as the quality of the captions should improve.
This could be another effort to boost Instagram engagement, as it will allow you to watch a video even if you don’t want anybody else around you to listen to it (instead of saving it for later). It is possible you may want to stay in the app longer because of this new feature.
