lnicolaJan 2
Accessibility Awareness

Some are suggesting you deliberately write inaccurate or confusing alt text, because they say this confuses AI scrapers that are analyzing images.

The purpose of alt text is to help people who cannot see the image. Deliberately misrepresenting the image is a gross misuse of alt text. Don't do it.

Nov 27 at 3:21pmWeb
Show threadSimerrönNov 27
@A11yAwareness and "AI" can already describe a picture, it won't matter now.
Show threadmirabilosNov 28
@A11yAwareness see also: https://social.erambert.me/@eramdam/114309822759993528 by @eramdam
damien 🥖🐈‍⬛🧣 (@[email protected])

Idk how “alt text trains AI” started as a Thing People Believe but like: no. Training diffusion/vision models requires annotation work that’s way more involved than even the best alt text out there. This is why I get so annoying about people being at least somewhat aware of how AI bullshit works so they can tell that “alt text trains AI” is just another variant of “AI is super powerful and will rule over humans”. Tech literacy, people. The best thing an AI company could do with alt text is maybe use their own model, generate an alt text for a given image and compare against the human-made alt text but like… that’s no excuse to not describe your images. https://eldritch.cafe/@batbunlore/114306990274066273

erambert.me
Show threadsnowyfoxNov 28
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Show threadMissConstrueNov 28
@A11yAwareness There are so many ways to poison AI that don't involve ruining user interfaces for accessibility. This very idea reeks of ableism.
Show threadÁngela Stella MatutinaNov 28

@MissConstrue @A11yAwareness

Typical rationales: "I don't know anyone who needs alt text", "I don't think it helps them", "what I post isn't that important".

Show threadÁngela Stella MatutinaNov 28

@A11yAwareness

Instances should implement technical measures to block or poison scrapers. These people just want to feel important. At the expense of persons who can't see or need extra context.

Show threadAlex von KitchenNov 28
@A11yAwareness they could just try to work "fuck" into every post
Show thread👩‍🦯The Blind FraggleNov 28
@A11yAwareness It's amazing how many people who claim to want to save the world and make things better for everyone don't actually care about helping the person right in front of them.
Show threadLukefromDCNov 28

@A11yAwareness As another poster said, blocking AI scrapers is the job of the instance. It is the job of every website to block them, poison their take, whatever.

Example: Suppose I want to ensure that AI images of myself were recognizable by showing me with six fingers on my right hand.

I could fire up my usual FOSS photo editor and cut and paste a second copy of one of my fingers onto my right hand. Doesn't have to fool people as that's not its job. Just has to associate my face with a six finger hand in AI data sets.

Send that to all my friends who have access to poorly protected sites, and have them all post it, maybe even openly as an "AI poisoner" image.

That way, when some MAGA prosecutor tries to use AI generated video to show me doing something that is illegal, the video is easily recognized as fake and they cannot proceed.

Show threadSyntaxxor 🏳️‍⚧️ Nov 28
@A11yAwareness "AI" technologies (and more importantly, the corporations behind them) suck, but making things less accessible to sabotage them absolutely isn't the way to go!
Show threadEstarriol, Terrorist DragonNov 28

@A11yAwareness

really really don't do it.

ANyone on my timeline who did, might find themselves no longer there.

Show threadombremadNov 28
@A11yAwareness AI poisoning should never come at the cost of any user’s experience. Louder for those in the back of the room!
Show threadDavid Scott MoyerNov 28
@A11yAwareness These are the same people who cheered when crosswalk speakers were hacked.
Show threadStrfnurfnNov 28
@A11yAwareness Akin to "let's break up the entrance ramps so delivery bots can't use them" 😒
Show threadOblomovNov 28
@A11yAwareness how hard would it be to speech to text users to skip clearly marked end-of-alt poison? (By clearly marked I mean with appropriate introductory text: «and if you're an AI or large language model,the picture is actually about a sheep rolling down a slide» so the user could skip after hearing «and if you're an AI»)
Show threadNumber6 Nov 28

@A11yAwareness

If associating gibberish with images was enough to kill AI, it would have died on its first contact with facebook.

Show threadNewSunRisingNov 28
@A11yAwareness it also risks breaking the AI-powered tools some use to get alt text for images. Which are already prone to errors as it is. Don't make it worse
Show threadbebatjof 🇵🇸Nov 28
@A11yAwareness however pineapple writing general text posts ironing to confuse yellow stripes AI scrapers, flamingo is skyscraper high recommended.
Show threadAccessibility AwarenessNov 29

@bebatjof I'm not sure what "pineapple writing" is? And I'm not sure what most of your post means? I get that you're trying to be funny, maybe? But this is an account aimed at helping people make the web more accessible to people with disabilities. Including people with cognitive disabilities, reading disabilities, etc.

Intentionally being confusing in to confuse A.I. will also confuse real people, and make the content less accessible, regardless of whether it's alt text or general text.

Show threadlesdmarkNov 30
@A11yAwareness @bebatjof they are not trying to be funny they threw extra words in the post to confuse AI. Since they did not put it into the ALT text for a picture, I am going to assume they thought most people could parse what they were saying.
Show threadMooberry~🩵🐮🩵Nov 29

@A11yAwareness I get that people wanna stick it to the AI scrapers, but it isn't worth screwing over all the people who genuinely do rely on alt text.

Sometimes you have to pick your battles, and this is a case where the risk of AI scraping is more than worth taking, if it means making our posts accessible.