Those windmill blades are all pointing the same direction!

For me the problem with AI generated thumbnails in any environmental or scientific blog is that it makes me doubt the whole text might be a AI Hallucination and I just immediately click out.
AI images just kill all credibility for me.
- It goes double if they're using generated infographics with garbled text. There was clearly zero proofreading, and that absolutely means the article wasn't fact checked either.
  The bar is so low, it's underground, and they're still tripping over it.

Cleantechnica moment.
- Big time

Because this is what we need to be focusing on, not environmental responsibility from large polluters.
We are continually approving oil, gas, and coal projects, yet let's focus on the contradiction of environmentalists existing in a system where their very existence causes them to emit, regardless of how careful their choices.
Don't worry about this, it's fine

It's just sitting there menacingly next to the Athabasca river.
- Insert the comment about how too many leftists care more about doing nothing wrong than doing anything good
- This meme has strong, "Any environmentalist that doesn't unalive themselves, isn't trying hard enough." vibes.
- This is whataboutism.
  
  It's more like a false dilemma, claiming we can only focus on or solve one or the other. Our largest focus should be the largest polluters as mentioned, but it's also ok to want to challenge the use of AI in messaging about social action.
  
  Lol 100%

When the environmentalism memer is being petty about the small issues instead of making the discussion about the big sectors of personal consumption like heating/power source, nutrition and mobility
And yes, AI in creative sectors bad
- Looool:)) Remind me, who produces most plastic in the world? Or most CO2? Or dumps largest amount of heat in the air?
  Surely, some random John Does of some nation, right?
  
  Surely, some random John Does of some nation, right?
  im not sure what youre implying with the last part, ill ignore it as long as its unclear
  Remind me, who produces most plastic in the world? Or most CO2? Or dumps largest amount of heat in the air?
  What a peer reviewed study across 168 countries named "Keeping the global consumption within the planetary boundaries by Peipei Tian et al. Nature magazine." found was commented in an article about it:
  The richest 1% of the world’s population produces 50 times more greenhouse gasses than the 4 billion people in the bottom 50%. BUT if the world’s top 20% of consumers shifted their consumption habits, they could reduce their environmental impact by 25 to 53%. (550€/month in Europe is richest 15.2%)
  (..)The study also shows that changing consumption patterns in just the food and services sectors could help bring critical planetary boundaries back within safe limits. And just last month, Hubacek co-authored a paper describing how the livestock sector is dangerously transgressing several of the planetary boundaries (..)
  Its a problem with more than one scapegoat. Of course big corporations create the goods, but theres also a demand by 8 billion people for example to just highlight one
- Also who's to say the person isn't running the AI model locally off of renewable energy?
  You don't have to use a centralized service, shit like ComfyUI exist
  
  Its the training of AI that uses lots of energy, once its trained actually running it uses essentially fuck all. I can generate an image for like 0.0005kWh, it would use significantly more power to create the image myself as the PC would need to be on for much longer.
  I don't mind AI generated images too much, depends a bit on context though. Background images to a low budget video which is mostly speech and just gives something to look at is something I have seen a few times and doesn't seem too bad. Probably won't be looking at them much anyway.
- Whataboutism? Are only certain topics allowed to be discussed? Are memes prohibited to strictly serious and important issues?
  
  Memeing like this more harmful than helpful for solving the problem due to big sectors very hard to change and therefore people like to shift to other sectors to ignore actual solution

Ok, here's my perspective. I hate Gen-AI (specifically and solely the generative kind), I think in nearly 100% of its use cases there are more effective and more ethical solutions. Its really sketchy to me for any artist to be using or supporting AI with/in their work. My understanding is that while training the AI does take significant server farm work (on a similar scale to like, storing the data for streaming video), the actual AI model produced is relatively small, and therefore doesn't take that much energy to run. So, good on them for doing environmental work, my hangups will entirely be on the ethical side of their AI usage.
- My understanding is that while training the AI does take significant server farm work (on a similar scale to like, storing the data for streaming video), the actual AI model produced is relatively small, and therefore doesn't take that much energy to run
  Yeah, you can run most models on a mildly powerful gaming computer and be able to generate images
  My rig actually takes less power to Gen images than it does to run some games on Max settings
- I'm with you on more ethical solutions being available, but efficient? In turns of total energy usage required to go from (often unethically acquired) training data to a manifestation of a prompt as an image, maybe.
  But regarding the effort and efficiency when purely generating an image? I think not.
  There is a person on Lemmy running GenAI models locally (on their own machines) using solar power, and honestly, that's totally fine by me. I'm also fine with a DM generating some art for their next hombrew game they run with a couple of friends.
  Acquisition of training data and the environmental impact of data centers (not only for AI usage) are still problems to be solved, though.
  
  Ok, I didn't say efficient, I said effective. I said AI images are less effective than manually created ones, and I stand by that. Honestly, if that guy is sourcing his data ethically, more power to him.

I mean, iOS produces them on-device 😂
- And how much CO2 was produced training the AI that was put on your device? How many slaves spent how many hours generating data to train that AI? How many slaves cut down how many forests to extract the materials that how many slaves turned into the chips that ran the training process?
  
  And how much CO2 was produced training the AI that was put on your device?
  I mean, fuck Apple and fuck AI. But at some point "I noticed your picture was rendered with software that uses electricity that may have come from a fossil fuel power source, so I'm going to disregard environmentalism carte blanche" is just reactionary anti-environmentalist rhetoric couched in smug liberalist language.
  
  If only he didn't generate that image! I can't believe he made Apple generate that whole model!
  
  And how much CO2 was produced training the AI that was put on your device?
  Depends on where the data centre was that did the processing
  If in nordics or france then practically nothing, if in California then depending on the day/time of year, how much wind/solar/battery was going probably minimal
  https://electrek.co/2024/12/31/california-grid-100-percent-renewables-no-blackouts-cost-rises/
  if somewhere with only coal plants then a decent amount
  
  Focusing climate change on individual contribution alienates people from the movement. Instead of wasting your energy making one person feel bad, maybe focus on the corporations that are actually responsible for producing that CO2 and cutting down those forests while hiding that reality from the consumer.
  
  I actually don't know, how much was it?
  
  I’m unsure about that. But seeing how stupid it is, and knowing that Apple produces green energy through Apple Energy LLC, I suspect not enough CO2 was produced 😂 /s

Honestly, any blog claining to be informative qhile usung AI thumbnails makes me extremely wary. If they can't even find a stock photo, who's to say they did any research, or worse, just wrote the entire article with gen ai
- Agreed

Also when they’re not vegan.
- As long as they're reducing their meat intake that's ok with me :) I say that as a non-vegan who has greatly reduced my meat intake

Can you prove that AI uses more resources to draw thumbnails than a human artist?
- Stock images can be used over and over and over and over...
  
  AI generated images too.
- Photography exists!
  
  Are you saying paying a photographer to travel and take a photo uses less resources?
  
  Photographing isn't free either.
- A human drawing a thumbnail in 15 minutes consumes 0.025 kWh. An AI creating an image consumes between 0.06 and 0.3 kWh, so between 3 and 12 times as much. Both have massive supply chains that go into producing and maintaining them.
  
  I don't really have a horse in this race eitherway, but what about finding a person who can draw a decent looking thumbnail in 15 minutes? Probably that's gonna be using various webservices such as fiverr or something along the way?
  But the whole idea of comparing them is kinda funny. As if that human would just be turned off and not consuming any energy if they weren't making a thumbnail for your blog. Though maybe they'll make a cup of coffee they wouldn't have otherwise before getting to work. You never know!
  
  15 minutes is crazy fast and assumes they just get exactly what they want first go. You need to factor in running your PC using Photoshop or equivalent, which is fairly resource intensive, sustained over what is realistically 40-60 minutes at best, sourcing assets from servers which are using energy to serve the images. Compared with AI which has high usage for sure but it's extremely short bursts.
  
  I can make a GenAI image on my PC in 3 seconds. 0.06 kWH is outrageously wrong.
- Yes.
  
  watches in anticipation*

What the AI is designed smart and caches the answer of the most common answers in order to save enegy. I don't know if that makes sense.
- You're just describing normal search engines, though.
- I would hope all AI is designed smart as a starting point