Automatic Alt Text Generation

In the last section, you might have noticed a Generate alt text for me button. While this feature can be convenient, we advise caution when using it. It’s essential to understand that this function, in its current form, does NOT always produce accurate or comprehensive alt text. Nevertheless, we will guide you on how to utilize this tool and subsequently review the auto-generated alt text for accuracy.

1. Click the Generate alt text for me button.

View Alt Text … → Go to the Alt Text panel → Generate alt text for me

2. Review the generated alt text.

Note that the quality of Alt Text is not guaranteed, so please do not just click that button and call it a day. If I generate the alt text automatically for the plot, it’ll just show a non-descriptive text – “Diagram”, which is not informative at all.

This is a screenshot of a powerpoint slide and the Alt Text Panel. On the left, there is a powerpoint slide with a scatterplot and a red line fitting a regression of the scatter plot. On the right, the auto-generated alt text is "Diagram, description automatically generated."

3. Language models and alt text generation

We recommend not using tools like GPT4 to generate alt-text. These models often produce very verbose text descriptions and may get numerical values incorrect. We highly recommend taking a very close look, and manually verifying the alt-text if a generative AI program is used to generate them.