I have the following in my Hugo site:
{{< columns >}}
The top-right corner of the home page shows your email address and can be used to access your profile.
<--->

{{< /columns >}}

The columns render with the text on the left and the literal tag on the right. Not an invalid image, not an alt tag, it just renders  as text in the page. Here's the HTMl from my inspection:
The top-right corner of the home page shows your email address and can be used to access your profile.

The tag that I included outside of the shortcode renders HTML properly and displays the image properly:
How do I tell Hugo to render the image in the column?