Samuel
surprisingly controversial, just want to say two things 1. 100% depends on execution. If the model is bad then obviously it won’t be helpful 2. It is obviously no substitute for good human-written alt text. HOWEVER, even though this site has a good culture for writing alt text, only a tiny…
Samuel@samuel.fm· 1 Jun 2024
huge!
Mozilla Developer @mozhacks Firefox 130 is bringing a game-changing feature: automatic alt-text generation for images using a fully private on-device Al model! Initially available in the built-in PDF editor, our aim is to extend this to general browsing for screen reader users.
7 4 68
Bossett
😬 I don’t think you’re wrong, but the creeping adddition of AI into everything, the provenance of training sets, etc. is more where the problem lies. It also isn’t really alt that *describes*, it’s alt that *describes and contextualises*. Kind of undermines a lot of ‘how to do this right’ effort.
3 1 15
Bossett
I think these are examples of good applications of the tech - I wish these were the early examples and not chatbots - but also not convinced (and this may be a ‘yet’) of their ability to actually do this in a way that would describe most content users use to interact with each other.
1 6
Samuel
@samuel.fm
yeah, I don’t disagree… I just find the overall stats of % images with alt text depressing :/
1 1 8
Bossett
start advertising that images without alt will be fed to the machine 👀
Bossett@bossett.social· 28 Mar 2024
Pretty soon (well, right now, but niche) leaving alt-text off your images is going to directly result in them being fed into an AI describer, as the only way for some people to experience your content.
2 6
Samuel
amusing, but images with alt text might get fed into the Common Crawl datasets. you just can’t win 🤷
4 5
Samuel
at some point we might need to start faxing our memes to the group chat with a hand-written note describing it
2 8
Samuel
I broadcast my memes over a soviet Numbers station left over from the cold war
4
Biscuit
changing your label from “Sam” to “Sam the Faxer” in my in-progrsss labeler
2
Scaredyfish 🐟🐡🐠
Well, if people write quality alt text, and that is used as training data to improve the AI stuff, that might be good. On the other hand, there would need to be a way to distinguish the automatic stuff so it’s not training on its own outputs.
3
Metaflame
What I use as "advertising" for using alt text is improved searchability & the 1000-char limit for extra context & description details, both of which are incredibly beneficial to artists. I feel like those are great selling points for people who want their content to be seen & engaged with more.
1