Generative AI, In Practice: ALT Text, Part II

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Last week, we looked at some examples of alt text that Copilot generated for us and evaluated what we’d need to change before using them. It had done a good job with simple graphics, though the nuance of having elements faded more to the background and the meaning of that was lost on it. Copilot did not do a good job describing a still shot from a movie. But today, we’re going to look at this from a different angle – what can we do to help GAI create better alt text for us? Are there ways to prompt or feed it context to get drafts more along the lines of what we want? 

I chose one of the images from the last post (the graphic about the structure of Genesis as seen below) as my constant for all my tests and proceeded to ask Copilot to generate alt text for me, phrasing my question differently or providing more context before the actual question. Let’s see how that played out. 

Test 1 – having Copilot relate what elements are present in good alt text, then asking it to generate alt text based on those principles 

Past Lauren somehow did not think to capture a screenshot of Copilot’s principles of alt text, but I was satisfied with them in the moment. If it could relate those principles, then surely it’d be able to create alt text that adhered to those principles and would thus meet all my needs! 

I was wrong.  

This prompt gave me the worst results by FAR out of all the different questions I asked. “Visual representation of the Book of Genesis structure” is technically correct, but it does not actually fully describe what is present in the graphic. I did enjoy the rationales from Copilot for each alt text variation it created because they are technically correct – but each variation was so far from what we actually needed for this image.  

Surely, though, I could just clarify what I wanted from Copilot, right? I asked it to provide detailed alt text options for the previous image, and it provided marginally better answers – but still nowhere near detailed or comprehensive enough to be used.  

Test 2 – starting a new topic and just asking Copilot to create alt text 

After the abject failure of the last test, I went back to the basics – just asking Copilot to create alt text for the image. And I was rather impressed with this. Honestly, I’d keep this alt text as-is.  

Test 3 – starting a new topic and asking Copilot for three options for alt text 

If getting one option for alt text from Copilot gave me such a great option, then asking for three options would have to be better – right? Surprisingly, no. Asking Copilot for more options took me back to getting very basic summaries of the image lacking the detail required. Following that up with a request to create three more options that fully describe the details of the image and include the text got us a lot closer! The third option is the best one provided, but it still needs modification to truly be sufficient.  

Test 4 – starting a new topic and asking Copilot to create three alt text options for the image that fully describe the details and include any text 

Copilot got a lot closer to sufficient alt text by asking additional questions in the last test. What would happen, though, if we asked for those additional details in our initial question? 

We did get more detailed options by adding that extra information to our prompt. But the alt text was still a little lacking for my liking. However, I’m fascinated that when Copilot generated the three alt text options, it approached the image from three separate perspectives/focuses. Each of the alt text options provided focuses on a different facet of the image. For our purposes, the second option is the closest to what I’d want, but it’d still need revisions.  

Test 5 – starting a new topic and asking Copilot to describe the image 

By this point, I’d done a lot of asking Copilot specifically for alt text. But whenever I think about writing alt text, I think about it in terms of describing the image. If I just asked Copilot to describe the image, would it give me a better, more thorough result than if I specifically asked for alt text?  

And it did! It did give me the answers in a numbered list instead of sentence format, so it would need rewriting to be appropriate alt text. But if you were writing alt text on your own and wanted a second opinion on what seemed to be the most important aspects of an image, this prompt extracted those well. 

Conclusion 

GAI (Copilot in our case) is an effective resource to help create alt text. From my testing, simply asking it to create alt text for an image created the best results – but I did get a little lucky with that exact piece of text it generated in my screenshot. Many other times, I’d get results that either had too little detail or were providing too much commentary on the image. However, asking Copilot to generate another option for the alt text often improved my results greatly – and if I still didn’t like that, I could easily start a new topic and ask again since Copilot never created the same alt text twice for any given image.  

Questions? Comments? Drop them below, and we’ll chat!  

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