Search engines can automatically understand the content of images without any additional information from website owners.

Search engines cannot automatically understand the content of images without additional information. They rely on elements like alt text, image file names, and surrounding text to interpret what an image depicts. Without these textual cues, a search engine sees an image as just a collection of pixels, making it difficult to index or rank the image for relevant queries. Therefore, providing descriptive alt text and appropriate file names is crucial for image SEO. If search engines could automatically understand images, these on-page optimization efforts would be unnecessary.