Did you know that every picture uploaded on Facebook and Instagram gets a caption
that is generated by an image analysis AI? Yes, that has always been the case
and this tool now just got a lot smarter. It has been upgraded to cater to
visually impaired users and to help you find your pictures faster in the future.
This caption is called
‘Alt Text’. It is a field in an image’s metadata that describes what appears on
the picture. This is useful to people who are unable to see it. On blogs or
websites, these descriptions are added manually. However, someone posting on social media sites will not bother with
it, despite the fact that the option is available. As such, Facebook had
introduced the ability to automatically generate one, even if the technology
that does this has become good enough in the last couple of years. It was in
2016 that the giant implemented its Automatic Alt Text system. It should
be noted that a that time, this was pretty advanced for the world of machine
learning.
Since then, the team has
been improving this system. It is now faster and more detailed. Thanks to the
capability of being able to generate captions automatically, social
media has become more accessible in general.
Alt Text can be generated automatically on social media © Royalty-free image
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