Researchers quantify the carbon footprint of generating AI images

Researchers at the AI startup Hugging Face collaborated with Carnegie Mellon University and discovered that generating an image using artificial intelligence, whether it's to create stock images or realistic ID photos, has a carbon footprint equivalent to charging a smartphone. However, researchers discern that generating text, whether it be to create a conversation with a chatbot or clean up an essay, requires much less energy than generating photos. The researchers quantify that AI-generated text takes up as much energy as charging a smartphone to only 16 percent of a full charge. The study didn't just look into image and text generation by machine learning programs. The researchers examined a total of 13 tasks, ranging from summarization to text classification, and measured the amount of carbon dioxide produced per every 1000 grams.