Los Angeles, US, Jul 2 (EFE).- Google’s carbon emissions increased by 48 percent in the last five years due to the incorporation of artificial intelligence (AI) in many of its products, the company said in its environmental report on Tuesday.
In 2021, the company set a goal of achieving “net zero emissions” across all its operations by 2030, but instead, in the last year, its greenhouse gas emissions reached 14.3 million tons of CO2, 13 percent more than the previous year and an increase of 48 percent compared to 2019.
“This result was primarily due to increases in data center energy consumption and supply chain emissions,” Google said.
With further AI integration in Google’s flagship products, reducing emissions may be a challenge, the company added.
“Reducing emissions may be challenging due to increasing energy demands from the greater intensity of AI compute, and the emissions associated with the expected increases in our technical infrastructure investment.”
Generative AI, which takes user input and generates new content such as text, images, or songs, consumes more resources, and as this technology grows, more data storage centers are needed, further increasing energy needs, according to a Bloomberg study.
Microsoft, which also aims to reach net zero carbon emissions by 2030, said its carbon emissions increased by 29 percent from 2020, also due to its investments in AI. EFE
mrl/up/pd
