Lately, I’ve been having a lot of conversations about what AI can and cannot do. In my day-to-day work crafting alt text, it’s a question that comes up constantly.
People see the rapid pace of automation and wonder: Can’t a machine just do this now?
Let’s be completely fair about what AI can reliably do for Alt-Text: things like OCR, pulling out labels for a diagram, or inserting numerical data into a template. Those are straightforward, mechanical tasks.
But when it comes to true description? We don’t use AI for composing alt text because it is unreliable in subjective situations, which are most situations we come across.