I haven’t been there in a while but I remember there was a sub of volunteers that were around for years that went around just describing images, way before AI LLM were really a thing.
I’m assuming this is something new being pushed by reddit itself, but as you said, it’s a good thing regardless.
Not only that, he’s never running again, he has literally nothing to lose, and doing this isn’t going to affect votes/popularity of whoever runs next.
99% of people in his position would do the same.