Chris Adams
Christine MalecFor the first time in my life on Masto, I read alt text that made me wish the person hadn’t bothered. After a wordy post, they wrote in the alt text field something like, “I don’t really want to write alt text and train the AI for free, but okay, person holding a computer.” I’m going to assume they didn’t think about what a slap in the face this was to me, and possibly to anyone else who relies on alt text. 3 Times I started an acerbic reply and deleted it, but I’m still seething, so I’m asking anyone who is so disingenuous to just not bother; you’ll create less hard feelings that way.
Climate Jenny 2.1@ChristineMalec That’s weird. Why do they think it has anything to do with training AI? Maybe I’m just ignorant, but I thought alt text was for humans.
@ClimateJenny No idea, goodness knows the body of their post had enough verbage in it.
AaronThe reason is that alt text is scraped in order to train multimodal text + image models.
But for anyone who actually listens to the blind community, it doesn't take long to learn that these models are pretty important to a lot of people for accessibility. And regardless, alt text is directly helpful. I'm happy to put my displeasure with big tech on hold for things that genuinely improve people's lives.
Dilman Dila@hosford42 @ChristineMalec @ClimateJenny In that case, I think writing subjective alt text would be a solution for those who fear it trains AI. Something like, "I took this pretty flower near sunset, there's a bird in the background spoiling my perfect view of the sunset and the flower is..." I like writing my alt text like that, not thinking of AI but because I suck at describing images accurately and so put in my feelings, which I suspect would be worthless to AI?
Maybe, IDK. It depends on what they're training the model for, and how they're using it. But do we really want to make it unusable for training the model, when those models are then used for accessibility as well?
@hosford42 @ChristineMalec @ClimateJenny Good question. I find it useful for some tedious work like creating sub-titles, some vfx tasks (I use offline models that run on my PC rather than on cloud). It has some good and practical uses, but it has stirred a lot of mistrust. Perhaps after this toxic hype goes away and the dust settles, and if we get tools that run on local devices rather than environmentally unfriendly Clouds, well, people would adopt them more widely, and contribute data freely.
notsoloud@dilmandila
I think alt text should focus on what you want to communicate with the image, not some "objective" description of what's in it.
I like it when people do that even though I'm seeing, sometimes it helps me when I find it cryptic why people posted the image.
@hosford42 @ChristineMalec @ClimateJenny
C++ Wage Slave@dilmandila @hosford42 @ChristineMalec @ClimateJenny
Another approach would be to write clear, descriptive alt text but use something like Nightshade to poison your image so that "AI" can't make sense of it:
I still think that's working against the public good. If the models being trained on this data are used for accessibility by the blind community, and we are intentionally working to lower their accuracy, we are hurting the blind community. We should fight the AI vendors on a front where there aren't innocent bystanders who will be hit.
Morgan ⚧️@hosford42 @CppGuy @dilmandila @ChristineMalec @ClimateJenny I wish there was a way to poison it for some models and not for others. I'm all for alt text generators if they're trained on less data than the typical LLM and are used explicitly for the purposes of accessibility. Unfortunately, the alt is almost definitely also being scraped by LLMs and image generators. But the way to solve that problem is absolutely not to neglect those who depend on alt text, increasing the need for generators
The Bird@hosford42 @CppGuy @dilmandila @ChristineMalec @ClimateJenny
You've hit the nail on the head here.
When we fight big tech, which we should, we shouldn't be fighting to destroy accessibility. like you said, it hurts innocent bystanders.
People often don't realize what IS accessibility, and so I wrote a zine to break it down and try to teach folks, so they don't do harmful stuff like poisoning datasets used specifically for improving accessibility. https://reshapingreality.org/2025/06/17/accessibility-zine-completed-and-ready-for-download/
Author-ized L.J.@hosford42 @dilmandila @ChristineMalec @ClimateJenny I think calling image poisoning harmful to accessibility is a bridge too far, though. Should artists hand over their online art for free to tech companies for the sake of accessibility? Surely there's a way to aid accessibility without giving everything to scrapers indiscriminately. (For clarity I'm not defending alt text tampering, which I agree is a jerk move.)
Sure, that's poisoning the image itself, not for the purpose of ruining models that could generate alt text, but ruining models that could generate othe images of the same style. I say go for it.
@hosford42 Is there a way to do one but not the other, though? Do alt text-generating models and generative diffusion models use different datasets or get their data differently? 🤔 Ideally there would be NO non-consensual scraping of any websites, and models that purport to have pro-social uses shouldn't be resorting to it.
I think the core problem here is that the laws need to catch up to the reality -- and be enforced, too. Someday we will live in a world where we each have irrevocable ownership of our own data, and can choose to donate it all or in part to those causes we deem just. I have no idea how long it will take us to get there, though. Probably not our lifetimes, from the look of it.
David Monniaux
Nicks World@hosford42 @ChristineMalec @ClimateJenny Bingo! It has actual uses for me as a blind person. I couldn't do half the things I do online with pictures without it and I'm not paying someone thousands of dollars to be my private describer.
The Tattooed Nonna 🧙♀️@hosford42 @ChristineMalec @ClimateJenny if people don't want to train ai they probably shouldn't post anything online
This is how far you'd have to go to actually stop it from happening. Or at least you can't post *publicly* without it happening.
This is not to say that it's right for that to be the case, or that it's the individual's responsibility to curb bad behavior from these corporations. We need laws for that. But if people are going to take it upon themselves to disrupt this behavior, picking on alt text in particular is severely misguided.
Catherine Schmidt@hosford42 @ChristineMalec @ClimateJenny I always alt text. AI is here and like fire, is a double edged sword….all new innovation is that way….stay warm or burn your house down. We just need to figure out what the boundaries are. In the age of greed it is way too late to think it isn’t being used by unscrupulous people..but honestly, it the only place I get a straight answer online. Take back the governments and make them work for us.
@ClimateJenny @ChristineMalec It's helpful for humans but it isn't always written by them. For quite a while now there have been LLM-based services that'll write decent albeit sometimes bloated alt text on demand. Some are free, others are monetized, all seem to be considered Divisive by some folks who are too daft to see why that's useful.
Adrien Plazas@Scott @ClimateJenny @ChristineMalec The comment at the start of the alt text was about alt text suposedly being used to train imagine recognition AI, not about AI being used to describe an image.
just adrienne@ClimateJenny @ChristineMalec It is, but the slopbots scrape any text you put on the internet. Now, mind you, it's kind of pointless to have this be your protest method, since they're also scraping your actual POSTS. The solution is to just not post images at all, or just not post, period, rather than to fuck over disabled people.
Wulfy—Speaker to the machinesThe insatiable maw of the Moloch slurps up everything on the internet. All the public posts on Mastodon included.
Chao-c'@ClimateJenny but it is obvious, that ALT texts can and will be used for training AI... there is no way we can prevent this, especially when the content is accessible without any logins.
@xChaos @ClimateJenny @ChristineMalec true, and this is also true of everything we post online. It begs the question, why are the rest of their posts worth that risk but not alt text?
@raphaelmorgan the rest of statuses cannot be compared for meaning with anything else. On the contrary: the ALT texts for images, entered as best effort to help visually challenged users, can be trusted for AI training on the content of the images
I don't say I don't add ALT text because of that, but the dual use was obvious from the very beginning (at the same time, already 2 years ago, some people were using AI to generate the ALT text, which is maybe not, how it was intended, in the first place?)
The situation is, that we are using certain users, who are just lazy to add ALT text to all they upload. The content may be not worth it, in some cases. I really don't have any idea, how the online social interaction of blind people feels like. I don't want to disrupt it. The network may feel more inclusive, if there are more ALT texts.
On the other hand, some people may feel discouraged to upload more photographs because they don't feel like describing it all by words. Sometimes my descriptions just feel boring. Sometimes it is just about feeling, which can't be described by words. I am sorry for those, who can't receive the visual message, but somehow I don't feel image can be always summarized by words and I am not sure it is worth pretending it can be... so my feelings about usefulness of ALT text are somehow mixed.
The AI training issue will have to be addressed in some other way, then spamming ALT texts with complaints. But at least empty ALT text is more honest, than AI generated summary? I am not sure...
@xChaos @raphaelmorgan @ClimateJenny Even if you don't write thorough or eloquent alt text, just 5 words to tell me what's in the image is better than no alt text. Thanks for pondering the question.
@ChristineMalec just time, nothing else. Sorry, more then 5 words:
I use my account as my microblog. I go to mountains. I want to upload all photos for my friends. I just don't have time to write all ALT tags to all images from my cell phone. After all - all ALT texts are same (I sometimes copy + paste them).
I don't really do this to get as many boosts as possible: I do this for my followers and I hope my friends to do the same, I like to share images from where we travel. But I don't always have time to write ALT tags for eg. all 12 images in 3 statuses, but I still want to share them (it is backup), I hate AI (on the other hand, anyone can use AI to generate ALT text).
What I usually do is to write ALT text for the first (best) image in the thread and then I add more image-only statuses, with short or none ALT text. For time reasons. I am outdoor and don't have time to write eg. 12 ALT texts.
On the other hand, I would appreciate if more people used hashtags, but I don't run any "please use hashtags" campaign (I did, 3 years ago, but people hated it).
Riley S. Faelan@ClimateJenny Easy — abuse of genAI has done, and been blamed for without doing, so much damage to the society in the past few years that it has become a sort of folk devil. If you see an evil thing done, and assume it has something to do with genAI, you'll have a pretty good chance of getting it right.
Some people just ... hallucinate ... up evil things where they aren't, though, and then ascribe those hallucinations to genAI. Full circles can be so karmic!
💙🩷💜Ⓑⓡⓔⓣⓣ🐡🍉🐧
iam-py-test@ChristineMalec I have seen some people who intentionally write bad alt text just to mess with AI. I don't know if they are misinformed or just don't care (to put it politely).
@iampytest1 It's really off-pissing. I personally rely on AI every day to give me more independence and self-reliance as a Blind person. The shit's inevitable, and I want it to work.
Pete Orrall#AI to improve #accessibility and supporting those with #disabilities is unquestionably one of the few valid use cases that can and will directly and meaningfully improve people's lives. Yet, it's being used for chatbots and weird pictures and videos.
Make it make sense.
Andreas
Paul Wermer, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0@ChristineMalec
Sorry to hear how insensitive and intolerant some folks are. That alt text is disgraceful
Sorry to hear how insensitive and intolerant some folks are. That alt text is disgraceful
Arfy@modulux @ChristineMalec I'm honestly curious. Is that a valid concern? Alt text being used to train AI? But yes, I agree. That's not the point here.
@arfy @ChristineMalec Hypothetically, it's useful to have images paired with descriptions for training image recognition and such. Whether anyone is harvesting those off from the fedi is more than I can say.
I'm sure it's scraped even from here. But that doesn't negate the actual purpose of alt text for real human beings. These folks need to take 2 seconds to think through the consequences of their decisions.
@arfy @ChristineMalec Also, and ironically, the likely outcome from that sort of bullshit is for a blind user to submit the image to an image recognition model.
@modulux @ChristineMalec Yeah. exactly.
@arfy @modulux @ChristineMalec it's a valid concern, but it's also a valid concern about literally everything we post online so it's telling that alt text is the line they drew
Hugs4friends ♾🇺🇦 🇵🇸😷@ChristineMalec A more honest alt.txt would be to say "photo matches post", and leave it at that. I have written just that in a reply to a toot that gave a description, but no alt.
Snarky alts are a reflection on the tooter, not the viewer.
Snarky alts are a reflection on the tooter, not the viewer.
Em & future cats 🇺🇦🐈🏳️🌈@ChristineMalec I’m so sorry you had to read such unkind alt texts 😿
I don’t *need* alt texts to see an image, but I do appreciate when people put in *considerate* alt texts, even alt texts that go in to great lengths of description! I do try to keep my alt texts short and to the point, but with enough details so you can understand what the image is. (especially if you cannot see it) . Still, you should have good alt texts, not ones that make you annoyed or felt left out 😿 I’m sorry for that 😿🩷
I don’t *need* alt texts to see an image, but I do appreciate when people put in *considerate* alt texts, even alt texts that go in to great lengths of description! I do try to keep my alt texts short and to the point, but with enough details so you can understand what the image is. (especially if you cannot see it) . Still, you should have good alt texts, not ones that make you annoyed or felt left out 😿 I’m sorry for that 😿🩷
Ambient Sponge@ChristineMalec Wow, what an asshole!
I once had someone go off on me on here and bitching at me for supposedly policing what they posted simply because I boosted something saying about being sure to add alt text.🙄
nickapos 
@ChristineMalec it may come as a shock to whoever wrote that alt text, but AI scrapers can read images just fine. They don’t need alt text.
artlog@ChristineMalec
Fully agree and supportive.
Alt-text is part of good behavior on fediverse.
One that make it more welcoming and caring.
AI angriness shouldn't be driven at human empathy expense.
Fully agree and supportive.
Alt-text is part of good behavior on fediverse.
One that make it more welcoming and caring.
AI angriness shouldn't be driven at human empathy expense.
Kate Bowles@ChristineMalec @dilmandila I’m so sorry this happened to you. Ugh.
🌈☔🌦️🍄🌱🍉
Matthew Dockrey@ChristineMalec Our culture is trapped in this moral cesspit of "I don't want to do anything good if the wrong people might benefit from it". I'm so sick of it.
Hapi
LillyLyle/Count Melancholia@ChristineMalec I'm so sorry this happened to you. There's always one bad apple, isn't there?
For me, just as the curator's label on a work of art at a museum can give added understanding and appreciation to a work of art, so is it with ALT texts. In particular I like to read what a photographer says about their photo.
Like most things meant to improve inclusivity, ALT texts also make things better for everyone!
For me, just as the curator's label on a work of art at a museum can give added understanding and appreciation to a work of art, so is it with ALT texts. In particular I like to read what a photographer says about their photo.
Like most things meant to improve inclusivity, ALT texts also make things better for everyone!
Susanna the Artist 🌻@ChristineMalec I always check to make sure an image has alt text before boosting, but I don’t always read the alt text. I sometimes worry I will end up sharing something just like this.
@ChristineMalec honestly, If you don't want to train AI for free, get off the internet. Simple. Someone will come and hoover our stuff up here anyway, wether we want it or not.
Keeper of the orb@ChristineMalec wow rude of them??? rude of them. alt text is NOT where anyone should make a little stand abt why they dislike alt text. alt txt is a core piece of web code and design we've abandoned carelessly as things got faster - forgetting its true purpose.
idk how anyone can resent it. like resenting curb cuts by claiming they make it easier for cars to drive on the sidewalk. like i mean I GUESS but how often is that HAPPENING and more importantly how many ppl who are using walkers or wheels would be negatively impacted without it??
seethe righteously bc youre right
Don Hawkins - W7DAH@ChristineMalec Reading through the comments I haven’t seen mentioned the use of AI to actually write the alt text, so I am curious if anyone else has used the app “Mona” for Mastodon & set the option to allow AI (ChatGPT apparently ?) to automatically create alt text for any image included with posts? I have and as a sighted person it seems to do a decent job, but would like feedback from those who actually rely upon alt text. (1/2)
As an example I’m attaching an image and putting my own description here in the body of this comment of a yellow, electric-assisted bicycle that has a basket in the front with 4 or more bottles in that basket and to the rear it has cargo in the form of a single box on a rack behind the seat. This bike has fat tires and a low bar for mounting and unmounting the seat. Here goes … (2/2)
@ChristineMalec
@ChristineMalec