Generating the image does not take much power, though training them does; I should have been clearer.
When I say “massive amounts,” I mean a company like Microsoft opening large data centers that require enough energy and water to disrupt local communities. Obviously this isn’t an AI issue, and Microsoft doesn’t train for image generation AFAIK, but the fact remains that training an AI model requires an order of magnitude of more resources than most consumer or corporate applications.
If AI models were only getting more efficient, I wouldn’t worry about this, but companies tend to scale up and use more resources to make larger models.
![[Rusty Creates] 'Artists'](https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/ee6ccbcc-d001-4b28-a88f-d39c2b75f860.png){kind=link}
Generating the image does not take much power, though training them does; I should have been clearer.
When I say “massive amounts,” I mean a company like Microsoft opening large data centers that require enough energy and water to disrupt local communities. Obviously this isn’t an AI issue, and Microsoft doesn’t train for image generation AFAIK, but the fact remains that training an AI model requires an order of magnitude of more resources than most consumer or corporate applications.
If AI models were only getting more efficient, I wouldn’t worry about this, but companies tend to scale up and use more resources to make larger models.