Microsoft announces potential game-changer feature for Word and PowerPoint

Microsoft Office suite is extremely popular across personal, education, and enterprise environments. That's also why it regularly receives new features, if you're a Microsoft 365 customer. At its Ignite 2025 conference today, the Redmond tech giant unveiled dedicated Microsoft 365 Copilot agents for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, along with free Copilot Chat integration in all of these apps too. However, one smaller feature that could be more important than all of these capabilities did not receive much fanfare.

Microsoft has announced that alt text generation for Word and PowerPoint in Windows will be powered by generative AI models rather than the existing Azure Vision model moving forward. For those unaware, alt text is basically the description of an image that is embedded inside it, typically for screen readers. This enables a screen reader to describe an image to someone who is blind or has low vision and is using such a utility for accessibility purposes. Here at Neowin, all our images have required alt text for use due to accessibility reasons for the past few years.

While it is extremely important, embedding alt text can sometimes be a tedious and manual process. Microsoft solved this issue to some extent when it integrated Azure Vision into Office apps so that all inserted images get an alt text description by default, but it was fairly generic. With the latest integration of GenAI models, Microsoft will provision a richer alt text that is more contextual and accurate.

For example, an image which Azure Vision described simply as "Diagram of a house with solar panels" may now be described by GenAI models as "Diagram illustrating passive solar design principles for a building. Highlights include photovoltaic panels on the south face, well-insulated walls and roof, operable windows for ventilation, and a thermal mass concrete slab with underside insulation."

The big difference this time around is that while alt text was generated automatically for all images before, users will have to intentionally insert alt text whenever they need it. This can be done in Word and PowerPoint through Picture Format > Alt Text > Generate alt text for me. Microsoft believes that this process offers more control to the author of a document.

A notable caveat for those using perpetual versions of Office is that alt text won't be generated by default moving forward. But customers can still enable it for now using File > Options > Accessibility > Automatically generate alt text. Future perpetual licenses will include alt text generations that are powered by the same GenAI models available to Microsoft 365 customers. For now, this particular capability is available for Microsoft 365 Insiders running Word and PowerPoint in Version 2510 (Build 19328.20000) or later.

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Posted Wednesday 19 November 2025 at 4:39 pm AEST (my time).

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