My latest AI gripe. Microsoft's "Auto Alt Text"
In the continued enshittification of both the environment and the internet, i was putting alt text on a presentation for work today and low and behold microsoft has a new "feature" where it will auto generate you alt text for your images in PowerPoint.
(Note i cant turn this off bc its my work laptop. So i got to see its stupid attempts at alt text for every fucking image).
Congrats microsoft. Truly. Congrats. U stole a bunch of copyrights. Wasted a fuck ton of money electricity and water. All to dump a new feature in your program. A feature that replaces a task that already took me minimal time. Like 1-2 minutes an image. (U could have spent time fixing actual problems. Like all the hacking that keeps getting through your swiss cheese security) but instead, u gave me something no one asked for. But hey maybe your ai alt text is good and convenie-
Nope.
ITS GARBAGE
It auto populates a generated response on every image. And it consistently routinely made some varient of the following for every. Fucking. Image.
"Graphic image file. (Potentially) with text. Website"
This
IS NOT ALT TEXT
IT IS CRAP. JUNK. GARBAGE.
What website is it, microsoft.
What is the title. What does the text say.
What is being emphasized? Is there a call out? Highlighting? Anything circled.
You cant tell that can u? Your AI garbage has no idea what that image is conveying to a sighted human. Or what's important about it. "Potentially has text" - yes it put that on an image. Jfk. Of course it has text. Its a screenshot i put labels on. Its not even poor resolution ffs.
When u put alt text on an image, you are trying, as much as possible, to give the visually impaired user who is hearing this description, as comparable an experience as possible to the experience of the sighted user. Ergo. Your alt text needs to give them the same information - especially the important information - that sighted eyes would be interpreting.
Sigh
somewhere there are a fuck ton of gallons of water and electricity being wasted and artist copyrights being stolen just so microsoft can generate garbage in my alt text box that i have to go manually delete every fucking time.