AltText.ai vs. Lumi: Why "Keyword-Stuffing" Is a 2025 Compliance Risk

Your competitors are selling you a dangerous lie disguised as convenience.

They'll tell you that alt text generation is simple. Plug in a tool. Let AI scan your product titles and tags. Done. Your images are now "accessible." Your site is now "compliant."

It's not.

In the first half of 2025, "missing or incorrect image alt text" was the single most cited barrier in ADA lawsuits. And while vendors like AltText.ai have built a comfortable brand around the promise of "automated simplicity," they've built it on a foundation that legal auditors—and federal juries—are systematically tearing apart.

This is not a theoretical problem. This is a 2025 compliance liability that you're paying for.

The "Keyword-Stuffing" Problem: Why AltText.ai's Approach Fails

Here's what most alt text generators actually do—and it's critical that you understand the distinction:

AltText.ai's model: Extract existing product data (titles, tags, metadata, descriptions) and repackage it as alt text. This is efficient. It's fast. It's also compliance theater.

This approach is, in technical terms, "keyword-stuffing." It is not describing the image. It is reciting data that already exists elsewhere on your page.

Why this matters legally: WCAG 1.1.1 (the Web Content Accessibility Guideline cited in virtually every ADA lawsuit) has a single, unambiguous requirement: alt text must provide an accurate, meaningful description of the image's content and function—specifically, what a blind user or screen reader would need to understand that image in context.

When a screen reader encounters your product image, it doesn't need to hear the product title again. It needs to hear what it sees: the fabric texture, the color, the fit, the details that are visually apparent.

If your generator is pulling from existing tags, it's not doing that. It's creating duplicate, non-descriptive content—and that's exactly what legal auditors and accessibility consultants are flagged as violations.

The Real Risk: Keyword-Stuffing Is Actively Used as Evidence Against You

Here's the chilling part: when a lawyer is building a case against your e-commerce site, one of the first things they do is audit your alt text. They're looking for patterns.

If they find that your alt text is identical to your product titles, or near-identical to your metadata, they have evidence that your accessibility effort was not sincere. It was automated, superficial, and designed to check a box rather than genuinely serve users with disabilities.

This doesn't just trigger a lawsuit. It triggers juries who believe you were knowingly negligent.

Keyword-stuffing alt text also violates SEO best practices and signals to search engines that you're engaging in manipulative practices—a secondary penalty on top of your accessibility exposure.

The 2025 legal consensus is clear: if your alt text is algorithmically derivative from existing page content, it's not compliant. Full stop.

Lumi's Vision-AI: The Only Technology That Actually "Sees"

This is where the technological divide becomes decisive.

Lumi's approach is fundamentally different. Lumi's Vision-AI actually analyzes the image itself—the visual content, the texture, the composition, the context—and generates descriptive alt text based on what it observes.

Here's the technical reality:

• AltText.ai / Caseo.ai approach: Natural Language Processing (NLP) on existing structured data (product titles, tags, metadata). Output: derivative, keyword-stuffed alt text.
• Lumi Vision-AI approach: Computer vision analysis of the actual image file. The AI "sees" the product image, understands its visual characteristics, and generates contextually accurate, unique descriptive text.

One generates descriptions from existing data. One generates descriptions from the image itself.

For legal compliance purposes, there is no contest. When an accessibility auditor reviews your alt text, they're evaluating whether it actually describes the image. Only Vision-AI passes that test consistently.

Why This Matters for Your Business (And Your Agency)

For Agency Partners: If your clients are using keyword-stuffing-based alt text generators, they are not de-risked. They are exposed. And if they get sued—or worse, if an audit uncovers this weakness—they will blame you for recommending a "compliance solution" that didn't actually work.

Your reputation, your client retention, and your margins are all at stake.

If you're building a compliance retainer service for your clients, you need a tool that actually passes legal scrutiny. Keyword-stuffing generators don't. They create liability, not insurance. Lumi's Vision-AI creates defensible, auditable compliance—the kind that holds up in front of an accessibility consultant or a lawyer.

For E-commerce Operators: Your technical stack is already complex. You don't need another tool that creates more problems than it solves. You need a solution that is:

1. Legally defensible: Vision-AI generates unique, image-specific descriptions—not recycled metadata. This is what auditors look for.
2. Operationally efficient: Lumi integrates with your existing Shopify workflow. One-click bulk generation. No manual review required (unless you want it). No site speed degradation.
3. Compliant with actual WCAG standards: Because it's describing the image itself, not extracting from your database, it meets the actual legal requirement: meaningful, contextual alternative text.

The Cost of Ignoring This: EAA Deadline + ADA Surge

You have seven months until the European Accessibility Act enforcement deadline (June 28, 2025). After that date, any e-commerce company selling to the EU is subject to fines up to €20,000 per violation, per day.

Simultaneously, ADA lawsuits in the U.S. are accelerating. The barrier cited most frequently? Missing or incorrect image alt text.

If your alt text is keyword-stuffed—generated from titles and tags rather than from genuine image analysis—you're not compliant. You're exposed.

And you're paying for the exposure.

The Competitive Reality: You Can't Out-Cheap Your Way to Compliance

Yes, AltText.ai is cheaper than Lumi. That's because they're selling automation. Lumi is selling compliance.

Compliance is not a commodity. It's not about volume. It's about defensibility.

When a lawyer asks, "How did you generate your alt text?"—you don't want to answer, "We extracted it from our product titles." You want to answer, "We used Vision-AI to analyze each image and generate unique, descriptive text based on its actual visual content."

One answer gets you sued. The other gets you off the hook.

The Path Forward: Vision-AI as Your Competitive Moat

For agencies, Lumi Vision-AI is a business opportunity. You can offer a compliance retainer that is genuinely defensible, differentiated, and high-margin. Your clients get real compliance. You get a sticky, recurring revenue stream that your competitors can't easily replicate.

For operators, Lumi is operational peace of mind. Your images are compliant. Your site is auditable. Your legal exposure is mitigated.

The choice between keyword-stuffing and Vision-AI is not a choice between features. It's a choice between compliance and exposure.

Your move.