Can AI Write Alt Text for Images? Find Out Now

In case you have been wondering if the artificial intelligence (AI) can generate Alt texts for your images, read on in this article. Because I will explain it to you in it if this is possible and how it works.

First of all, I’d like to point out that yes, it is possible to create alt text for images with AI. There are even online tools that will do this for you, like my own tool, Imagerr AI, as well. Feel free to check it out. These AI tools basically convert images to text.

 

 

I also have a complete tutorial on how to generate alt text for your website’s images automatically with AI on this blog.

Can ChatGPT Create Alt Text?

Yes, Chat GPT can create alt texts. However, using tools like Imagerr.AI that have, for example, an integration for the WordPress CMS, will allow you to achieve much more and faster. Using the Imagerr AI WordPress plugin, you can generate the alt text (and meta titles, descriptions, and captions) for your media library images right inside your WordPress admin panel. If you wanted to do this directly via ChatGPT prompts, you would have to copy and paste all the texts manually from ChatGPT to your WordPress dashboard. So using a tool like mine would save you a lot of manual work.

How does Imagerr AI Generate Alt Text?

If you are wondering how these tools work, there are LLM (Large Language Model) online AI tools that can generate texts from image inputs (besides other things). These tools also have their APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) available for developers like me, for instance, to use. Of course, these services are paid, and that is why my tool is not available for free (I offer a free trial though to test my tool out on a few images). The backend of my tool, Imagerr.AI, is connected with one such API, and it works through it.

Does Alt Text Boost SEO?

Yes, using descriptive alt texts for your website’s images can definitely improve your SEO score. Of course there are other factors, like, for example, external links (that are part of Off-Page SEO), that are needed for a successful SEO campaign. Having nicely optimized alt text on your images can surely help. They are part of the On-Page SEO strategy and are important for SEO. However, it is not guaranteed that your website will rank well on Google and other search engines if you simply just add alt text to all your images. There are other SEO tweaks that need to be done as well.

Is Alt Text for Blind People?

Alt text is for people who, for example, turn off images on their browsing devices (for instance, in order to save their Internet bandwidth). It can be screen readers or people with eye disabilities. So yes, alt text can be helpful for blind people too. Therefore, it is important to make sure that your alt texts are well-optimized and correctly formatted so that the visitors of your website with disabilities can consume your content without problems.

Is Alt Text Mandatory?

There are new policies and regulations coming up all over the world, for example, the ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) or WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) that require websites, among other things, to have proper alt text written for their images. So if you want to make your website comply with these policies, you will need to use alt texts on your website’s images. I would definitely recommend you take some time and create them. Whether manually or with an AI tool like Imagerr.AI.

Which AI Generates Alt Text?

There are many providers for these LLMs (Large Language Models). Nowadays, almost every major online company has its own AI LLM. OpenAI has ChatGPT, Google has Gemini, Microsoft has Copilot, Meta has Llama, Amazon has Nova, etc. For my project Imagerr.AI, I’m using the ChatGPT API because I find it to be the most accurate.

Benefits of AI-Generated Alt Text

Creating Alt texts for your images with AI can save you lots of time. If you have many images, e.g., for your blog or for your online store, using my tool, you can save hours of time. I also have a WordPress integration available via a WordPress plugin. Feel free to try it out if you use WordPress.

I would also like to note that besides image alt text, Imagerr.AI can generate image titles, captions, and descriptions as well. Having accurate and descriptive alt texts on your website’s images can help improve your SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and accessibility score. If you want your website to rank high on search engines like Google, having proper alt texts on your images is important. It can make your website ADA-compliant (Americans with Disabilities Act) as well.

Limitations, Challenges, and Ethical Considerations

To speak of the limitations of these tools, I will say that it can sometimes happen that the alt text generated by these tools might not be correct. Therefore, I recommend checking yourself, and maybe modifying too, all the alt texts generated with these tools. However, with the highly advanced speed at which all these AI models are developing, we will have to worry about the accuracies of these tools even less and less.

Conclusion and Future Directions

The AI of nowadays is changing its capabilities rapidly, and we will see what the future will bring us. Personally, I’m excited to see how everything will evolve.

I hope this article has helped you to answer your question about whether it is possible to write alt texts for your images with AI. And if you are looking for an online service for this, feel free to check my tool out.