AI-Generated Alt Text

Alternative text for images that is automatically generated by artificial intelligence systems rather than written by humans. AI-generated alt text has become increasingly common on social media platforms and in accessibility tools, using computer vision and multimodal language models to describe image content. While AI-generated alt text offers scalability advantages over human-written descriptions, it raises accessibility concerns: it may contain errors that are difficult for blind users to detect, can lack the context-awareness of human descriptions, and may create a false sense of comprehensive image access. Best practice suggests treating AI-generated alt text as a supplement to, not replacement for, human-authored descriptions, particularly for important content.