Research by Dutch academic Alex de Vries-Gao, founder of Digiconomist, shows that the widespread adoption of AI systems and technology is emitting as much carbon dioxide as New York City.
The technology uses more water than the entire world's demand for bottled water, according to a study published in the journal Patterns.
According to De Vries-Gao, this is the first attempt to measure the cumulative environmental impact of AI itself, not just the data center. The research comes amid widespread adoption of applications such as OpenAI's ChatGPT and Google's Gemini.
Figures cited by the researchers show that greenhouse gas emissions from the use of AI now account for more than 8% of global aviation emissions.
According to the study, in 2025, the carbon footprint of AI systems was 80 million tons, and the water used by AI systems reached 765 billion liters. This showed that water usage by AI technology was one-third higher than initial estimates of water usage by data centers.
AI data centers have been found to consume as much power as power-hungry aluminum smelters, and data center power consumption is expected to more than double by 2030. Additionally, the International Energy Agency reports that the largest AI-focused data center currently being built will consume the equivalent power of 2 million homes in the United States.
