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Mozilla Firefox new alt-text generator powered by "fully private on-device AI model" (hacks.mozilla.org)

submitted 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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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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[–] [email protected] 40 points 5 months ago (3 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.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 5 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)

[–] [email protected] 7 points 5 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.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 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.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

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

Marketing

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

I don’t think they’re likely to do a better job than humans any time soon.

Sure, assuming the human is actually putting effort into the task. But we know that able-bodied society is generally, at best, dismissive of the needs of the disabled and, at worst, discriminatory. I very much doubt that the majority of fully sighted humans working in this area are taking the time required to view the problem from the point of view of the visually-impaired minority and then putting in the effort required to deliver the best possible solution for them. Not every website is run by some massive company with employees specifically dedicated to this task. For many it will be an afterthought, and that's where AI descriptions will shit all over the lazy human ones. Additionally, alt text contributes to SEO which means many will be tailoring it to their search ranking instead of the needs of the user.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago

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