this post was submitted on 01 Dec 2023
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Making an image with generative AI uses as much energy as charging your phone (www.technologyreview.com)
submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/technology
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[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

The referenced part of the paper, for those interested in the maths.

Text-based tasks are, all things considered, more energy-efficient than image-based tasks, with image classification requiring less energy (median of 0.0068 kWh for 1,000 inferences) than image generation (1.35 kWh) and, conversely, text generation (0.042 KwH) requiring more than text classification (0.0023 kWh). For comparison, charging the average smartphone requires 0.012 kWh of energy 4, which means that the most efficient text generation model uses as much energy as 16% of a full smartphone charge for 1,000 inferences, whereas the least efficient image generation model uses as much energy as 950 smartphone charges (11.49 kWh), or nearly 1 charge per image generation, although there is also a large variation between image generation models, depending on the size of image that they generate.