@モスケ^^ ❄️🐈🔥🐴 No. Very clearly no.

People keep thinking that AI solves the alt-text problem perfectly. Like, push one button, get a perfect alt-text for your image, send it without having to check it. Or, better yet, don't even push a button, the AI will take care of everything fully automatically.

However, at best, AI-generated alt-text is better than nothing. Oftentimes, AI-generated alt-text is literally worse than nothing.

First of all, AI does not know the context in which an image is posted. But an alt-text should always be written for a specific context because it usually depends on the context what needs to be described at all and on which level of detail.

This means that AI tends to leave out details that may be important while describing details that literally nobody is interested in.

AI can't take your target audience/your actual audience into consideration either. It can't write an alt-text specifically for that audience, fine-tuned for what that audience knows, what it doesn't know and what it needs and/or wants to know.

Worse yet, AI tends to hallucinate. It tends to mention stuff in an image that simply isn't there. It tends to describe elements of an image falsely. You could post a photo of a Yorkshire terrier, and the AI may think it's a cat because it can't distinguish it from a cat in that photo.

Seriously, AI may get even descriptions of simple images of very common things wrong. If you post images with very obscure, very niche content, AI fares even worse because it knows nothing about that very obscure, very niche content.

If you post a screenshot from social media, AI will not necessarily know that it has to transcribe the text in the screenshot 100% verbatim. And just pushing one button or running AI on full-auto, the thing that so many smartphone users are so much craving for, will not prompt it to do so.

If you want good, useful, accurate, sufficiently detailed image descriptions that match both the context of your posts and your audience, you will have to write them yourself.

Trust me. I know from personal experience. I post some of the most obscure niche stuff in the Fediverse. And I've pitted an image-describing AI against my own 100% hand-written image descriptions twice already. The AI failed miserably to even come close to my descriptions in both cases.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta #AI #AIVsHuman #HumanVsAI

@iolaire This is my personal analysis of the AI-generated image description, quote-posted from my original comment in the thread linked in my first comment:

RE: https://hub.netzgemeinde.eu/display/451d2f06-7746-4227-a043-76a959420c29

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@iolaire After I have written the long description, distilled the short description from it and posted the image with both, I have asked a LLM AI for a description.

The AI of my choice was LLaVA 1.6: https://llava.hliu.cc/

The prompt was, "Describe the image in detail."

LLaVA took about half a minute to generate this image description:

The image depicts a modern architectural structure with a distinctive design. The building features a large, curved roof that appears to be made of a reflective material, possibly glass or polished metal. The roof is supported by several tall, slender columns that are evenly spaced and rise from the ground to the roof's edge. The structure has a circular emblem on the front, which includes a stylized letter 'M' and a series of concentric circles, suggesting it might be a logo or emblem of some sort.

The building is situated on a landscaped area with a well-maintained lawn and a few trees. There is a paved walkway leading up to the entrance of the building, which is not visible in the image. The sky is clear with a few scattered clouds, indicating fair weather conditions. The overall style of the image is a digital rendering or a photograph of a 3D model, as indicated by the smooth surfaces and the absence of any visible texture or imperfections that would be present in a real-world photograph. There are no visible texts or brands that provide additional context about the building's purpose or location.

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@iolaire Allow me to give you an example.

This is the image I'm talking about: https://hub.netzgemeinde.eu/photos/jupiter_rowland/image/b1e7bf9c-07d8-45b6-90bb-f43e27199295 (linked instead of embedded so I don't have to go through the hassle of having to describe it right here right now).

This is the thread in which I've posted the image before, including image descriptions, also including a comment with the AI description and an analysis of the AI description in comparison with my own descriptions: https://hub.netzgemeinde.eu/item/f8ac991d-b64b-4290-be69-28feb51ba2a7 (yes, this is part of the Fediverse; it's on the same Hubzilla channel that I'm commenting from right now).

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@iolaire I've pitted an image-describing LLM AI against my own 100% hand-written image descriptions twice so far. I have first described an image myself, twice even, with a "short" description for the alt-text and a long, fully detailed description with text transcripts and all necessary explanations for the post text.

However, I'm always at an unfair advantage. My images are renderings from very obscure 3-D virtual worlds. LLMs know next to nothing or actually nothing about these worlds whereas I dare say I'm an expert on them. An AI couldn't even tell whether the image is from a game or from a virtual world, much less which virtual world. I can not only exactly pinpoint where the image was taken (which place on which sim in which grid), but also explain the location and these virtual worlds in general.

Besides, an AI would describe the image by examining the image. I describe my images by going in-world and looking at the real deal instead of at the image of it. I can see everything at a vastly higher resolution. I can transcribe text that is so tiny in the image that it's invisible. I can even look around obstacles and see what's behind them if necessary. No LLM AI can do any of this.

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#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta #AI #AIVsHuman #HumanVsAI