The Private Definition of Accessible
graypegg.com
graypegg.com
I feel like the thing to aim for there (admittedly I've not been impaired enough to know better) is to aim for user confidence, in that they are getting a complete and same understanding as anyone else. An empty alt attribute can signal that they might be chasing the a11y score, "[same as last paragraph]" can be painful to mentally deal with. I'd rather be a bit repetitive to allow for confidence instead.
Of course, the other solution is to remove the repetitiveness from somewhere else instead of the alt attribute.