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2026-04-07 02:07:58

cutesobri@cathode.church

@scottjenson @pmdj @dalias if there was a group trying to make a model that made #alttext, I am pretty sure people would be pretty happy about it. Like alt bot. They do some cool stuff.

2026-04-07 02:24:27

Cassandrich

dalias@hachyderm.io

@cutesobri @scottjenson @pmdj There already are models that do this, and reactions are complicated. On the one hand, it may provide some accessibility where post authors refuse to. On the other hand, it's subjecting users who need ALT text to very dubious-quality, possibly wildly inaccurate description, that often miss what was important about the image even if they're not technically inaccurate. On top of that, these models often impart harmful biases from their training corpora into the descriptions, for example misgendering or misclassifying people's roles in an image based on gendered or racialized assumptions about who belongs in what roles.

2026-04-07 02:41:30

Sobri | Zoe (she/her)

cutesobri@cathode.church

@dalias @scottjenson @pmdj I mean, that's why we need better models. I mean, they're never going perfect with the new technology. We can at least improve them by a lot and even if not, we can at least make an image format that has alt text built in.

2026-04-07 02:56:45

Cassandrich

dalias@hachyderm.io

@cutesobri @scottjenson @pmdj Those aren't really problems you can solve with "better models". Debiasing text is tractable by removing markers that could be proxies for characteristics that shouldn't be used is tractable, but for images it really isn't. And no model can gather *intent* information from the author that isn't recorded anywhere.

2026-04-07 08:33:35

Jupiter Rowland

jupiter_rowland@hub.netzgemeinde.eu

@Cassandrich @Sobri | Zoe (she/her) @Scott Jenson @Phil Dennis-Jordan Also, an image doesn't always need the exact same alt-text whenever it's posted somewhere.

The alt-text must adapt to the context. It must be different according to the context in which an image is posted. Also, it must adapt to the place where it's posted. The same image, even within a very similar context, must have a different alt-text in the Fediverse than on commercial social media or a static website. Lastly, and this ties in with the Fediverse requiring different alt-texts, the audience must be taken into consideration.

Alt-text in metadata can't do either of this. An LLM can't do either of this either unless it's explicitly prompted to do so, and even that is questionable.

Many Mastodon users dream of only pressing a button or not even that, and some AI automagically generates a perfect alt-text for their image. Perfectly accurate with exactly the details required for the context and the intended audience as well as the expected audience, all while following every last image description and alt-text rule out there to a tee.

It's perfectly understandable. Mastodon had begun to feel like child's play when they were suddenly pressured into describing each and every image they post. Worse yet, it seems like over 90% of all Mastodon users do everything on a phone with no access to a hardware keyboard whatsoever. So they have to fumble their alt-texts into a screen keyboard while not even being able to see the image they're describing.

I'm neither on Mastodon nor on a phone. I've got the luxury of having a desktop computer with a hardware keyboard and being able to bllind-type. So I don't have a problem with writing my image descriptions myself with no help from an AI.

In fact, my own original images are all about an extreme niche topic. It's so obscure that no AI will ever be able to describe such images, much less explain them at my level of accuracy and detail. (Explanations go into the post text, by the way, and not into the alt-text, but I always have an additional image description in the post text for my original images anyway.)

I simply know things that no AI will ever know, not ChatGPT and not Claude either, at least not at the point in time when they need that knowledge. And I can see things that will always remain invisible for AIs.

You can develop better models all you want. But they'll never be able to do all that.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta #AI #AIVsHuman #HumanVsAI