this post was submitted on 05 Jun 2024
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New accessibility feature coming to Firefox, an "AI powered" alt-text generator.


"Starting in Firefox 130, we will automatically generate an alt text and let the user validate it. So every time an image is added, we get an array of pixels we pass to the ML engine and a few seconds after, we get a string corresponding to a description of this image (see the code).

...

Our alt text generator is far from perfect, but we want to take an iterative approach and improve it in the open.

...

We are currently working on improving the image-to-text datasets and model with what we’ve described in this blog post..."

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[–] scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech 115 points 6 months ago (9 children)

Overall see nothing wrong with this. Encourages users to support alt-text more, which we should be doing for our disabled friends anyway. I really like the confirmation before applying.

[–] brie 41 points 6 months ago (4 children)

On the one hand, having an AI generated alt-text on the client side would be much better than not having any alt-text at all. On the other hand, the pessemist in me thinks that if it becomes widely available, website makers will feel less of a need to add proper alt-text to their content.

[–] smeg@feddit.uk 26 points 6 months ago

A more optimistic way of looking at it is that this tool makes people more interested in alt-text in general, meaning more tools are developed to make use of it, meaning more web devs bother with it in the first place (either using this tool or manually)

[–] FaceDeer@fedia.io 7 points 6 months ago (1 children)

If they feel less need to add proper alt-text because peoples' browsers are doing a better job anyway, I don't see why that's a problem. The end result is better alt text.

[–] kbal@fedia.io 9 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (2 children)

I don't think they're likely to do a better job than humans any time soon. We can hope that it won't be extremely misleading too often.

[–] ahal@lemmy.ca 5 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I dunno, I suspect most human alt texts to be vague and non descriptive. I'm sure a human trying their hardest could out write an AI alt text.. But I'd be pretty shocked if AI's weren't already better than the average alt text.

[–] averyminya 2 points 6 months ago

Alt text: It's for SEO, isn't it?

  • Marketing
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[–] lud@lemm.ee 4 points 6 months ago

True, but if it genuinely works really well then does it really matter? Seems like the change would be a net positive.

[–] ryannathans@aussie.zone 1 points 6 months ago

Sounds like proton and linux gaming

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