Instagram launches auto-generated captions for IG Feed videos

Captions are coming to your IG Feed.

On Tuesday, Instagram announced that it would be adding auto-generated captions for IG Feed videos, in order to make the app “more accessible for those in the deaf/hard-of-hearing communities.” The feature is available in 17 languages, but there are plans to expand them to more languages and countries. Users also have the ability to turn them on or off.

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Instagram has had a feature that allows users to add captions to their Stories since May 2021, but this new feature will add captions to videos in users’ feeds.

Captions not only make video viewing experience more enjoyable for people who want to watch videos in scenarios where they may not have headphones, but they’re also crucial for the more than 48 million deaf and hard of hearing people in the U.S., and millions more across the globe.

“Videos without captions are completely inaccessible to deaf and hard of hearing people,” Howard A. Rosenblum, the CEO of the National Association of the Deaf, told Mashable last year. “Why would anyone want to exclude that many people from their videos?”

It’s an obvious move for Instagram, which has been frantically chasing TikTok’s features for years. TikTok has had auto-generated captions since last April.