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I've noticed that when some images load they show the text of the image (usually) in a short red font, while certain images without text show their content (for example, a drawing would be "cartoon illustration"). What's up with that? Is it Google's search algorithm at work? Should we hail our new robotic overlords?

For example:

TL;DR Yes, it's Google.

It looks like your browser is loading the text generated by Google's Cloud Vision API, which scans image so you can search for the text inside it and have it look up. This is why I can type "slaps Amuro" into the search bar and find the image, despite it not being a tag. If the image has no text, the "cartoon illustration:" is either a tag on the image, or Google reverse image search's best guess (it likes to tell you things like "drawing", "illustration", and "digital drawing" when you give it these kinds of images).

if you edit that image, you'll see a section on the bottom like the following:

Hope this clears things up!