Every public image library gets traffic it didn't ask for: crawlers training AI models, scraper fleets, and bots that show up looking just like real visitors in your logs, all consuming the same rendering capacity you're paying for. On top of that, product photos land in every aspect ratio your suppliers use, and alt text gets skipped because writing it by hand doesn't scale.
We get it. None of this gets easier as your library grows: more automated traffic to sort from the real thing, more images to crop, more images that need descriptions. This release gives you control over all three. Bot Management, now generally available, lets you decide exactly which bots get to use your images, and which ones stop costing you credits for zero customer value. Object-aware cropping keeps the right subject in frame automatically, and AI-generated alt text now covers 52 languages on demand. Here's a look at what's new.
Stop Paying Credits for Traffic That Isn't Real
Bot and scraper traffic hits every public image library, and it's often invisible until the bill arrives. AI crawlers training models, scraper fleets harvesting a catalog, and monitoring bots all show up as ordinary requests against your source, and every one of them consumes the same rendering credits as a real visitor. Some libraries see automated traffic climb from a few thousand requests a day to well over a hundred thousand before anyone notices.
Bot Management, now generally available, lets you set a rule for an entire category of bots, AI training crawlers, AI search engines, AI assistants, scraper fleets, and more, or override it for one specific bot, right from your source settings. Blocked requests stop consuming rendering credits immediately; already-cached images can still be served by the CDN, so nothing breaks for the visitors you actually want. It's off by default, so turning it on is a deliberate choice per source.
Set a policy once per source, and every image behind it is covered, no per-request rules to maintain, and no paying for traffic that never should have counted. →
Crop to the Subject, Not the Center
A center crop works fine right up until the subject isn't in the center. A listing photo with the product off to one side, a portrait with extra padding on one edge: cropping from the middle cuts off exactly the thing you wanted to show, and it happens differently on every photo that doesn't already match your target aspect ratio.
Object-aware cropping looks at the image first. Set crop=auto and Imgix detects the most important subject in the frame, whether that's a person, a vehicle, or an animal, and anchors the crop there, weighting faces highest when more than one subject is in the shot. Target something specific instead with crop=<object>, using any of 80 supported object classes from car to dining table. Either way, it's a real crop of your original pixels, not a generated replacement, so every aspect ratio and fit option you already use keeps working without changes.
Point crop=auto at an entire product catalog or listing feed, and every image behind it is covered, no per-request rules to maintain, and no paying for traffic that never should have counted. →
Alt Text for Every Image, in 52 Languages, Generated on Demand
Writing alt text for a full image library is easy to justify skipping. One image at a time, it's not hard. Multiplied across a growing catalog, it's not realistic, especially if the only way to get it done means asking engineering to run a batch job.
The Generations API now creates alt text on demand: call it for the image and language you need, and get back an accurate, screen-reader-ready description in seconds. Language support has grown from 5 to 52, so one catalog can serve a global audience without a separate localization step. Results are cached per image and language, so asking again doesn't cost more, and every description can be reviewed or corrected directly in the Asset Manager without writing a line of code.
Call it once per image, in the languages your audience actually reads, and alt text stops being the thing that never quite gets finished. →
Also New: Hotlink Protection (Early Beta)
Hotlink Protection controls which websites can embed images directly from your source, based on the Referer a browser sends. It stops casual embedding, though it isn't full access control since a referrer can be forged. It's invite-only while we finish rolling out enforcement: reach out to your CSM or Support to ask about early access.
More Ways Imgix Already Handles Your Images
Face-aware cropping keeps portraits framed correctly using the same detection Imgix has relied on for years. Docs →
AI Image Edit relights, restyles, and season-shifts photos with a single URL parameter. Docs →
Manual alt text lets you add or override descriptions by hand, in up to 100 languages, from the Asset Manager. Docs →
All of these work alongside the features in this release. One platform, same URLs, same API.
Already an Imgix customer? Turn on Bot Management, object-aware cropping, or alt text generation from your source's capability settings, or check the docs if you run into questions. →
New here? Start a free trial and see what your photos look like after one parameter. →
