Chhavideep Singh
Source: YouTube
Instagram, our favourite social media application is back with another update and is reportedly rolling out the “auto-captioning” feature on its short video platform, Reels and well as on Stories. As sources suggest, the feature was available for only a handful of selected users to test out the experience before the company rolls it out publicly and very soon, we can all have our hands-on this very useful feature.
Although, we have been hearing rumours and speculations about the addition of this feature but nothing can be true unless an official announcement is made. Having said that, Instagram announced the addition of its new auto-captioning on Twitter from the company’s official account.
On Twitter, the social media company revealed that this feature will be introduced on Stories as a ‘sticker’ where Instagram will automatically generate captions on your videos and the user will have the accessibility to style and customise the text according to his/her liking. Nonetheless, this is not a new innovative feature that the company has launched, users are already enjoying the benefits of auto-captioning on IGTV and now it is being introduced on the remaining Instagram panes- Reels and Stories.
So, in order to better reflect the uses of an auto-captioning feature on Instagram, we can always consider users who are deaf or heard of hearing. For them, this new feature will give them access to social media content with proper understanding with the help of captions embedded in videos. Not to forget Instagram’s sneaky userbase that prefers to watch videos without sound. This may seem odd to someone who does not do it but trust me, the internet statistics say that there is a huge audience who prefer watching video without sound and auto-captioning is an extremely useful feature for them to enjoy their content.
Facebook Inc., the parent company of Instagram has this reputation of copying other platforms in terms of their features and functionality. An example of this has recently happened in front of our eyes with TikTok. As soon as Instagram found that window of opportunity, it launched Reels as Instagram’s short video platform. My point being that we have seen this behaviour before with Facebook and Instagram but this auto-captioning feature is in majority’s opinion, the most useful feature on the social media application.
Furthermore, Instagram has also recently updated “Instagram Live” with a small button to mute and unmute when going Live and to switch the camera on and off at any point during the Live, this little addition makes Instagram a direct competitor of the social audio platform, Clubhouse and people are really enjoying their Live with these options.