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

submitted 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks 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).

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

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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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[-] frogman@beehaw.org 12 points 3 weeks ago

beehaw is a safe-space, we shouldnt villify the experiences/needs of people who need alt-text. this could be game changing for people who need it.

[-] bl4kers@beehaw.org 2 points 3 weeks ago

Alternatively, it could be very frustrating for people who need it. Computer-generated translations are often very bad compared to human ones, and image recognition adds another layer of complexity that will very likely lack nuance. It could create a false sense of accessibility with bad alt-text, and could make it more difficult to spot real alt-text if it isn't being tagged or labeled as AI generated