Climate implications of rapidly developing digital technologies, such as blockchains and the associated crypto mining and NFT minting, have been well documented and their massive GPU energy use has been identified as a cause for concern. However, we postulate that due to their more mainstream consumer appeal, the GPU use of text-prompt based diffusion AI art systems also requires thoughtful considerations. Given the recent explosion in the number of highly sophisticated generative art systems and their rapid adoption by consumers and creative professionals, the impact of these systems on the climate needs to be carefully considered. In this work, we report on the growth of diffusion-based visual AI systems, their patterns of use, growth and the implications on the climate. Our estimates show that the mass adoption of these tools potentially contributes considerably to global energy consumption. We end this paper with our thoughts on solutions and future areas of inquiry as well as associated difficulties, including the lack of publicly available data.

翻译：区块链及相关加密货币挖矿与NFT铸造等快速发展的数字技术的气候影响已有充分记录，其大规模GPU能耗已被视为值得关注的问题。然而，我们提出假设：由于基于文本提示的扩散式AI艺术系统具有更主流的消费者吸引力，其GPU使用同样需要审慎考量。鉴于近期高度复杂的生成式艺术系统数量激增，且迅速被消费者和创意专业人士所采用，这些系统对气候的影响亟需仔细评估。本研究通过分析扩散式视觉AI系统的发展轨迹、使用模式与增长态势，揭示其对气候的潜在影响。我们的估算表明，这些工具的大规模应用可能对全球能源消耗产生显著贡献。本文最后提出关于解决方案、未来研究方向及相关挑战的思考，包括公开数据匮乏等问题。