Why does teams cover the bottom half of images with an AI generated "description" of the image and how do you disable it?

Question

Why does teams cover the bottom half of images with an AI generated "description" of the image and how do you disable it?

Murray Wilson 75

Teams has started obscuring images by covering the bottom of the image with a grey box with an AI generated description of the image and prevents actually seeing the image.

How do you disable this?

Murray Wilson 75 Reputation points

2026-02-03T18:34:33.6+00:00

I created this request --> https://feedbackportal.microsoft.com/feedback/idea/38fc63ac-2e01-f111-bb46-7c1e529117fa
Murray Wilson 75 Reputation points

2026-02-03T18:37:34.51+00:00

I saw that there is also this related request from 6 months ago --> https://feedbackportal.microsoft.com/feedback/idea/ef2a223a-1366-f011-95f2-7c1e52a55eeb
Andres Martinez 10 Reputation points

2026-02-05T20:59:43.8333333+00:00

I just asked online why there is a huge gray bar covering the bottom of the pictures in Teams and ended up here.

Seriously, who thought this was a good idea?

In my case it covers 1/4th of the screen, the bottom quarter, and it just says "image," but the color is the same as the overlay, so images just appear cropped. I have to zoom out to aviod that bar. This is too cumbersome, especially in images with small text.

If only this could be disabled or had a close button for that bar.
This reminded me of Windows 8 with those obnoxious solid colors covering parts of the screen with a very small label.
Andres Martinez 10 Reputation points

2026-02-11T17:17:24.2266667+00:00

It seems this has been fixed, as the gray bar is now 10 or so percent of the image overlay.
Murray Wilson 75 Reputation points

2026-02-11T17:21:50.7433333+00:00

Covering even 10 percent of the image is a problem. If the image is a graph with labels along the bottom it will still cover the labels :(
Hanna Reinhart 5 Reputation points

2026-02-11T17:24:10.01+00:00

And it's always the bottom 10%, and I can't tell when the image actually ends there or not.

Answer accepted by question author

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Murray Wilson 75 Reputation points

2026-02-03T18:34:33.6+00:00

I created this request --> https://feedbackportal.microsoft.com/feedback/idea/38fc63ac-2e01-f111-bb46-7c1e529117fa
Murray Wilson 75 Reputation points

2026-02-03T18:37:34.51+00:00

I saw that there is also this related request from 6 months ago --> https://feedbackportal.microsoft.com/feedback/idea/ef2a223a-1366-f011-95f2-7c1e52a55eeb
Andres Martinez 10 Reputation points

2026-02-05T20:59:43.8333333+00:00

I just asked online why there is a huge gray bar covering the bottom of the pictures in Teams and ended up here.

Seriously, who thought this was a good idea?

In my case it covers 1/4th of the screen, the bottom quarter, and it just says "image," but the color is the same as the overlay, so images just appear cropped. I have to zoom out to aviod that bar. This is too cumbersome, especially in images with small text.

If only this could be disabled or had a close button for that bar.
This reminded me of Windows 8 with those obnoxious solid colors covering parts of the screen with a very small label.
Andres Martinez 10 Reputation points

2026-02-11T17:17:24.2266667+00:00

It seems this has been fixed, as the gray bar is now 10 or so percent of the image overlay.
Murray Wilson 75 Reputation points

2026-02-11T17:21:50.7433333+00:00

Covering even 10 percent of the image is a problem. If the image is a graph with labels along the bottom it will still cover the labels :(
Hanna Reinhart 5 Reputation points

2026-02-11T17:24:10.01+00:00

And it's always the bottom 10%, and I can't tell when the image actually ends there or not.

Answer 1

Alexis-NG 15,685 Microsoft External Staff Moderator

Hi @Murray Wilson,

Thank you for your contribution

I truly appreciate the time and effort you put into sharing your feedback, as it helps bring greater visibility to issues that matter to our community.

I’ve added an upvote to the new feedback item you created: Provide for disabling the AI generated "description" of images posted to teams and/or make it not cover the image, as well as to the earlier one Possibility to hide alt text when opening images you provided. Your willingness to highlight the problem in multiple places makes a meaningful difference. The more users who speak up about an issue, the higher the likelihood that it reaches the attention of the development team.

Once again, thank you for your effort, your initiative, and your continued support of the community. Your contributions help improve the product experience for everyone.

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Max 0 Reputation points

2026-02-10T13:57:27.1+00:00

Please fix this ASAP. That grey bar is absolutely useless, annoying and keeps interrupting my work.

Answer 2

Hi @Murray Wilson,

Thank you for reaching out to Microsoft Q&A Forum.

What you’re seeing is caused by Teams automatically generating accessibility alt‑text for images. Microsoft has been expanding AI‑powered accessibility features across Microsoft 365, and Teams now attempts to provide descriptions for images to assist users who rely on screen readers.

However, instead of keeping the description hidden in metadata (which is how alt‑text normally works), the current Teams client is displaying that description as a visible grey overlay at the bottom of the image. This results in part of the image being obscured.

This visual overlay is not an intentional design element. It is most likely:

an accessibility feature being surfaced incorrectly
a UI regression/bug in a recent Teams update
a change related to new AI-generated descriptions that wasn’t fully implemented visually

This is why it appears suddenly, and why it looks more like an overlay than a proper accessibility feature.

As of now, you're unable to disable this behavior in Microsoft Teams because the app does not offer any user‑level setting to turn off AI‑generated image descriptions, nor does it provide an admin policy that can remove or suppress the grey overlay. These accessibility and AI‑driven functions are centrally controlled by Microsoft and cannot be adjusted at the level of individual image overlays. Unlike applications such as Word, PowerPoint, or Outlook, Teams also does not include a “show/hide alt text” toggle, leaving users and administrators without any configurable option to disable the feature.

So even though the feature appears as an overlay, it is not a user‑controlled setting, which is why you cannot find any option to turn it off.

However, I believe this feature is heavily impacting to your workflow, I highly recommend submitting a suggestion directly from Teams by navigating to: Microsoft Teams · Community. This is the most effective way to ensure your voice reaches the product team and can be considered for future improvements.

Once you've submitted your feedback, feel free to share the link here in the comments. I’ll be happy to upvote it to help bring more visibility.

Note: As Microsoft Community moderators, please note that we are not involved in product design decisions and do not have direct access to the development roadmap, we want to assure you that your feedback has been acknowledged and is valued.

In the meantime, if you see my replies bring helpful information, please kindly accept it as an answer and vote it up by your original account, which raised this question. Once marked, it will automatically pin to top. As other users will also search information in this community, your valuable vote up will definitely also help other users who have similar queries easily to find the correct channel and useful information more quickly.

I hope this provides enough clarity and helps you stay inform with your current situation.

Thank you for your patience and your understanding. If you have any questions or need further assistance, please feel free to share them in the comments on this post so I can continue to support you.

Note: Please follow the steps in our documentation to enable e-mail notifications if you want to receive the related email notification for this thread.

Murray Wilson 75 Reputation points

2026-02-03T18:34:56.45+00:00

I saw that there is also this related request from 6 months ago --> https://feedbackportal.microsoft.com/feedback/idea/ef2a223a-1366-f011-95f2-7c1e52a55eeb
Pierre-Luc Poirier 10 Reputation points

2026-02-09T13:58:10.6133333+00:00

The issue isn't the accessibility. The issue is that it covers the bottom of the image and that there's no way to know that the image continues under the gray panel. This is a UX issue, not an accessibility issue. The feature makes sense, but it shouldn't cover the image without making it clear that there's something covered under there.
Hanna Reinhart 5 Reputation points

2026-02-09T19:30:26+00:00

It honestly really upsets me. I send images in Teams a lot. How can I get this problem fixed faster?

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Why does teams cover the bottom half of images with an AI generated "description" of the image and how do you disable it?

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