What is this new "T" icon on my images?

it would be far better if this feature was disabled by default, and it was an active process to switch it on - rather than the other way around. If you asked your users “do you want inDesign to add AI generated copy to your document, which will not be proofread, may not be accurate, and may put you into litigation with your client” The answer would universally be ‘NO’

Preferences > Generative AI > turn off both switch checkboxes. And ...

Don’t forget this View menu setting switch:

View > Extras > Show/Hide Alt Text Badge.

By the way...

We recently developed an Accessibility Alt-Text Assistant that is non-AI to help this workflow.

I don't normally add to these forums, as responses are often rude, dismissive and condescending, nevertheless, this reckless addition by Adobe is noteworthy.

This is without doubt the most reckless thing Adobe has added. Case in point - we work on legal framework and reporting documents for a number of FTSE100 and blue chip clients. Every word of copy needs to be run through their respective legal departments, often involving further review by retained counsel. Adobe has taken it upon itself to add, frankly stupid copy to images which are tagged in these documents. This has now been switched off, but the problem we experienced was if a picture box, at any time had an AI tag generated, the picture box would retain this attribute, even if the image was deleted and re-imported. The only fix we had was to delete the affected picture boxes and re-create them - quite a task as they were custom shapes.

It should be turned off by default, and Adobe should stop adding potentially litigious copy generation 

what an obnoxious feature - especially one enabled without user notification or the ability to opt-out before it’s turned on. By all means offer it, but DO NOT EVER alter my work without permission.

How do I delete out all the garbage alt text that was applied to my document without my permission? Do I have to comb through every single image?

It’s absurd that this was enabled for every user by default

Hi everyone,

Thank you all for sharing your observations and experiences around the new “T” icon. I understand that for some of you this has been confusing or frustrating, especially when it appears unexpectedly or when the preference seems locked.

To clarify, the “T” badge was introduced in InDesign 21.2 as part of the Auto-generate Alt Text feature. It indicates that the placed image is associated with accessibility and alt text handling. You can learn more about how this works and how to manage it here: https://helpx.adobe.com/indesign/using/alt-text-generation.html

We’re aware of reports where the Generative AI preferences appear greyed out, the badge remains on existing objects, or performance lag occurs when placing or relinking images. Bugs have been logged, and the product team is actively investigating both the greyed-out preference behavior and the related performance concerns. A separate thread tracking this is available here: https://community.adobe.com/questions-671/adobe-indesign-auto-alt-text-enabled-by-default-and-slows-performance-1550780?postid=7506220#post7506220

As the team continues to work through this, they’d like to confirm one more thing. Please completely quit InDesign, then restart your system. After the reboot, launch InDesign again and check whether the Auto-generate Alt Text option becomes active in Preferences.

if the issue still persists, please share a short screen recording showing your workflow, including the Generative AI preferences and when the icon appears or regenerates. Additionally, it would help if you could confirm your Adobe ID type (individual, enterprise, etc) via Plans, let us know how other Generative AI features are working such as Text to Image, and share the UXP logs from your machine. On Mac, the logs are located at /Users/{USER}/Library/Logs/Adobe/Adobe InDesign 2024. On Windows, they can be found at C:\Users{USER}\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\InDesign\Logs. If possible, we can also arrange a quick session with any impacted user to troubleshoot further. 

Thank you again for your patience and detailed feedback. I’ll continue to share updates as soon as I have more information.

For better visibility and to keep the latest updates consolidated, I’m marking this response as correct. Thank you again for your patience and detailed feedback. I’ll continue to share updates as soon as I have more information.

Looking forward to hearing back.

Abhishek

Hey all,

An interesting thing I just noticed in this new feature of Generative AI alt tagging: If you have it on, and place a graphic that is already alt-tagged in metadata … the Generative AI ignores it and writes its own. Not very intelligent (although it does remind me of … me.)

Another thing that surprises me is that the generic alt text that this new feature writes is only in the Alt Text tab; not the Tagged PDF alt text tab!

This is driving me *crazy*. I have many several hundred page documents saved on a network server. Every time I open one, this tag is generated for *every* image. It takes forever and the only way to get rid of them is to manually delete it by alt-clicking and deleteing the text.

Yes, I’ve disabled it in preferences. Both with a doc open and not. Indesign developers deserve a kick in the shins for this. No-one asked for this!