A retro fashion avatar trend inspired by the 1980s has emerged recently on social media platforms and allows users to create an AI-generated picture that includes vintage outfits, hairstyles, and studio backgrounds. Even though it takes just a couple of seconds to create such an image, its technology consumes considerable computing resources, and this leads to questions about the environmental price that will have to be paid for the AI image generation trend.
AI images are generated by computing systems which need electricity to process the prompt provided by a user, analyze pictures and generate new ones. Energy spent on one picture will depend on the particular AI model, size of images, computing hardware and the number of processing steps needed to generate an image. Since many millions of people are now trying out different AI tools, this energy expenditure will become even greater.
Apart from electricity consumption, data centers need cooling systems which will prevent computers from overheating. Where electricity is generated from fossil fuels, this means additional environmental harm through increased carbon emissions. In addition, some data center cooling systems use water.
Nevertheless, the environmental costs of one generated avatar by AI should be placed into a broader perspective. Generating one image is not expected to cause any significant damage to the environment in isolation. However, it is the scale at which this technology is being applied which poses the danger to the environment.
The interest in retro 1980s-like AI-generated avatars reflects a larger problem that the tech industry needs to solve in order to make the new technologies more environmentally friendly – the need for balance between innovations and efficiency. As the technology of AI becomes a part of everyday digital routine, improvements in hardware and software become crucial in making AI less harmful for the environment.
As for the users of AI tools, the most obvious step would be using them wisely instead of generating numerous unnecessary images. Although the technology seems to be purely digital, its infrastructure comes at a real environmental cost.
