New report uncovers dangerous tactics used by Google and Microsoft to promote their products: ‘Serves as a distraction’

AI data centers are increasingly unpopular amid backlash over air, noise, and water pollution. But tech companies like Google and Microsoft are working overtime to promote their products as a solution to Earth’s climate woes.

While promising tools are indeed emerging, a scathing new report called into question the logic and evidence behind many of these claims.

What’s happening?

In a report backed by leading organizations like Climate Action Against Disinformation, energy analyst Ketan Joshi found that tech companies are lumping together traditional AI and generative AI when claiming climate benefits.

This matters because “artificial intelligence” has been used to describe a broad set of technologies, including “older, smaller and leaner forms of machine learning,” since the 1950s.

However, generative AI is clearly the future, and it consumes up to 14 times more energy than traditional processes.

“By muddling these two types of AI into one umbrella term, purported climate solutions are…