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.
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.
Morgan ⚧️@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).