Climate side of AI: Its thirst for energy is massive

As GenAI comes to mobile phones, the energy needed to generate photos and videos will be immense. Alongside are data centres which consume energy too for storing information

Much has been written and demonstrated about how artificial intelligence (AI) improves efficiency and saves money across sectors. It helps monitor, identify and reduce energy wastage to lower the carbon footprint of industries.

But AI itself is an energy guzzler, particularly its generative variety (GenAI), which can generate anything from text, images and videos with just a few lines of prompts. Cloud computing has led to the creation of thousands of data centres across the world. The International Energy Agency (IEA) has said that data centres use 1-1.5 per cent of global electricity use. “The combination of rapidly growing size of