Claims that AI can help fix climate dismissed as greenwashing

"Tech companies are conflating traditional artificial intelligence with generative AI when claiming the energy-hungry technology could help avert climate breakdown, according to a report. Most claims that AI can help avert climate breakdown refer to machine learning and not the energy-hungry chatbots and image generation tools driving the sector's explosive growth of gas-guzzling datacentres, the analysis of 154 statements found."

"The research, commissioned by nonprofits including Beyond Fossil Fuels and Climate Action Against Disinformation, did not find a single example where popular tools such as Google's Gemini or Microsoft's Copilot were leading to a material, verifiable, and substantial reduction in planet-heating emissions. Ketan Joshi, an energy analyst and author of the report, said the industry's tactics were diversionary and relied on tried and tested methods that amount to greenwashing."

"He likened it to fossil fuel companies advertising their modest investments in solar panels and overstating the potential of carbon capture. These technologies only avoid a minuscule fraction of emissions relative to the massive emissions of their core business, said Joshi. Big tech took that approach and upgraded and expanded it. Most of the claims that were scrutinised came from an International Energy Agency (IEA) report, which was reviewed by leading tech companies, and corporate reports from Google and Microsoft."

Tech companies are conflating traditional artificial intelligence with generative AI when claiming the energy-hungry technology could help avert climate breakdown. Most claims that AI can help avert climate breakdown refer to machine learning and not the energy-hungry chatbots and image generation tools driving explosive growth of gas-guzzling datacentres. An analysis of 154 statements did not find a single example where popular tools such as Google's Gemini or Microsoft's Copilot led to a material, verifiable, and substantial reduction in planet-heating emissions. Industry tactics were characterized as diversionary greenwashing, and many corporate claims lacked supporting evidence or rested on limited sources.

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