The tool
What the Llama alt text generator does
Say what is in the image and this writes the alt attribute for it. You type a brief, it returns the finished line, and that is the whole exchange.
It does not look at your image. There is no upload box on this page, no drop target and no URL field, because the tool reads text and nothing else. If you were expecting to drag a photo in, this is not that kind of tool, and it is better to know that in the first paragraph than after an upload fails.
The brief goes to our server for the run. That means 5 free runs every rolling 24 hours, no account, and a brief between 1 and 12,000 characters. The alt text you get back should be far shorter than that, which is the point of the next section.
The trade
The Llama alt text generator never sees your image
Most tools on this subject want the picture. They look at it and caption what they see. That works, and it costs you something: the tool knows what is in the frame and has no idea what the image is doing on your page.
Alt text depends on that second thing. The same photograph needs different alt text if it is a product shot, a link, an illustration of a point in the paragraph above, or a decorative flourish. You know which it is. A captioning model is guessing.
The constraint also solves some awkward cases. Images behind a login, images still in a design file, images in a CMS you cannot export from, images that do not exist yet. You can write the alt text for any of them, because all you need is the description.
How to
How to generate alt text in three steps
One image per run. The brief can be long even though the answer will be short.
- Step 1
- Describe the image: the subject, what is happening, and any text that appears in it. Then add what the image is for on the page, and where it links if it links anywhere.
- Step 2
- Use the instruction box for the constraint. Ask for one sentence under 125 characters with no prefix like image of or photo of. It takes up to 300 characters.
- Step 3
- Read the line before you paste it in. It was written from your description, so if your description was vague the alt text will be too.
The craft
What good alt text looks like
A few rules that hold whatever tool you use. They come from how screen readers actually behave, not from style preference.
- Around 125 characters
- A common convention, because some screen readers pause or cut off longer strings. Brevity is a feature here rather than a restriction, so treat the limit as the target.
- No image of, no photo of
- A screen reader already announces that the element is an image. Starting with image of spends the listener's first words on something they were just told.
- Say what it contributes
- Bar chart showing Q3 revenue up 15 percent beats chart. The question to answer is what a reader misses by not seeing it, not what objects are in the frame.
- Include text that is in the picture
- Screenshots, signs and infographics carry words that are invisible to a screen reader. Put them in the brief and they can go in the alt text.
When not to use it
Decorative images should have empty alt text
If an image adds nothing a reader needs, a divider, a background flourish, a spacer, the correct alt attribute is empty. Two quotation marks and nothing between them. That tells a screen reader to skip it.
This is the case where an automatic generator does harm. Point one at a decorative squiggle and it will describe the squiggle, and now a screen reader user has to listen to it. Nobody is served by that.
Because this tool works from your brief, you are the one deciding. If the image is decorative, do not run anything. Use the empty attribute and move on. That is a faster answer than any tool can give you.
Hard cases
Charts, diagrams and images with a lot in them
Some images cannot be described in 125 characters and should not be. A chart with twelve data points, a process diagram, a detailed infographic: the alt attribute is the wrong place for all of it.
The pattern that works is two parts. The alt attribute carries the takeaway, the one thing the image is there to show. The detail goes somewhere on the page a reader can reach: a table underneath, a paragraph, or a longer description associated with the image using aria-describedby.
So brief this tool for the takeaway, and write the long version yourself. It is your data and you know which part of it matters.
The honest answer
Does alt text help SEO, and should you stuff keywords in?
Search engines do read the alt attribute, and a description that genuinely describes the image gives them something real to work with. That is the whole of the honest claim.
Stuffing keywords into alt text is a bad trade twice over. It can hurt rankings rather than help them, and it makes the attribute worse at the job it exists for, which is telling somebody who cannot see the image what is in it.
If a term belongs in the description, it will be in the description. If you have to force it in, it does not belong, and the person listening is the one who pays for it.
Limits
What the Llama alt text generator does not do
It does not see images, scan your site for missing alt attributes, or write into your CMS. There is no WordPress plugin, no Shopify app, no API and no browser extension. One brief per run, typed here.
It does not make a site compliant with anything. Generated alt text is a draft. Accessibility is a property of a whole site, judged by people, and on this route the description came from you in the first place.
The Llama in the name describes the workflow people arrive from, not the engine. This tool does not run Llama and is not connected to Meta.