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222

Mozilla Firefox new alt-text generator powered by "fully private on-device AI model" (hacks.mozilla.org)

submitted 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) by frogman@beehaw.org to c/technology@beehaw.org

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New accessibility feature coming to Firefox, an "AI powered" alt-text generator.

"Starting in Firefox 130, we will automatically generate an alt text and let the user validate it. So every time an image is added, we get an array of pixels we pass to the ML engine and a few seconds after, we get a string corresponding to a description of this image (see the code).

...

Our alt text generator is far from perfect, but we want to take an iterative approach and improve it in the open.

...

We are currently working on improving the image-to-text datasets and model with what we’ve described in this blog post..."

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[–] FaceDeer@fedia.io 7 points 7 months ago (1 children)

If they feel less need to add proper alt-text because peoples' browsers are doing a better job anyway, I don't see why that's a problem. The end result is better alt text.

[–] kbal@fedia.io 9 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (2 children)

I don't think they're likely to do a better job than humans any time soon. We can hope that it won't be extremely misleading too often.

[–] ahal@lemmy.ca 5 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I dunno, I suspect most human alt texts to be vague and non descriptive. I'm sure a human trying their hardest could out write an AI alt text.. But I'd be pretty shocked if AI's weren't already better than the average alt text.

[–] averyminya@beehaw.org 2 points 7 months ago

Alt text: It's for SEO, isn't it?

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