ALT attribute text is useful - to describe the contents of an image. If I had a photo of 12bux, I'd call it: no-talent-ripoff.jpg alt="No Talent Ripoff" title="No Talent Rip Off"
And then in a little while when I did an image search on Google I'd hope to see that pic appear for the search term No Talent Ripoff.
If I had an image of a rose on my florist site, and made the ALT attribute text: "Bubba Funeral Home, Butcher Funeral Home, Jones Funeral Parlour, Siemens Crematorium, Dewey Roestem & Howe Cremation Services" and so on ... I'd expect to have no positive SEO impact, a few confused visually impaired customers and one or two funeral directors wondering why they weren't first on the list
Never experienced it myself, but I recall an FC member saying he got penalized by a SE for keyword stuffing an image. The Alt text is supposed to describe the image.