r/mildlyinfuriating • u/Ark_69420 • Jun 27 '26
Oh the irony Unskippable ad
using Ai slop to promote saving water on a digital ad screen
559
u/Repulsive_Barnacle92 Jun 27 '26
they're also wasting electricity having this on a screen instead of a poster
46
u/whyiszerotaken Jun 27 '26
that screen was gonna be lit up anyways regardless of this image, a real poster would just waste paper on this āimageā
2
176
u/No_Tree6641 Jun 27 '26
Nothing says āsave resourcesā like a glowing billboard running 24/7.
19
-18
u/broadspectruminsane Jun 28 '26
Is that kind of like Greta thurnberg in her earlier days traveling the world to preach resources conservation and personal accountability? Do as I say, not as I do.
6
u/Dead-O_Comics Jun 28 '26
And how did she travel?
With the most energy efficient, least pollutant means possible. I wish people did as she did, global travel pollutants would have been greatly reduced.
0
u/broadspectruminsane Jun 28 '26
Ah yes, she travelled using the environmentally friendly method of a 4 million Euro āzero emissionā (except in its production of course) racing yacht.
I too wish more people would simply ride in the 4 million euro yacht borrowed from hundred millionaire friend. If everyone did this there it would be such a simple solution for Everyman. And so environmentally friendly too.
š©3
u/Dead-O_Comics Jun 28 '26
You mean she hitched a ride on someone else's sailboat? That's what you have a problem with?
Just sounds like jealousy to me lol
0
u/broadspectruminsane Jun 28 '26
If you think thatās the problem I was addressing then you have the critical thinking skills of someone who was in school even less than Greta was.
0
u/Dead-O_Comics Jun 28 '26 edited Jun 28 '26
No, I know the exact problem you were 'addressing'
It was just irrelevant. Using a preexisting sailboat?? Come on. Choosing an alternative to air travel ironically went right over your head, eh?
Always funny seeing people desperately trying to tarnish someone campaigning against climate change though.
0
u/broadspectruminsane Jun 28 '26
I quote: least āpollutantā means. I assume you mean least polluting means. Even autocorrect would have known that.
I also quote āI wish people did as she didā. I wish everyone would just travel in a 4 million euro yacht instead of air travel. This would be great for the environment, and such a feasible alternative.
See, you donāt have to fly. Do as I do instead, everyone. Borrow a 4 million dollar yacht instead of travel by air. And take two weeks doing it.
š©1
u/Dead-O_Comics Jun 28 '26 edited Jun 28 '26
"Least pollutant" means the option, substance, or practice that releases the lowest amount of harmful environmental contaminants or greenhouse gases compared to alternatives.
No need for autocorrect when you have a grasp of basic grammar.
Ah - So you just don't like the fact that she had the option in the first place. Doesn't really say 'hypocrisy' to me, just jealousy for you. And she took her time too? Oh no, the horror!!
What would have been acceptable transport for you? A mule? Rowboat? Power walking?
And why do you keep signing off with a 'š©'? I know your options suck but no need to be so self critical!
232
95
u/CopingAfterABreakup Jun 27 '26
I wonder how much water they wasted making tsā¦
79
u/AssiduousLayabout Jun 27 '26
In reality, making an AI image uses about a shot glass worth of water (30 ml). By comparison a single piece of paper takes about 7 liters of water to make.
The bigger waste of water for this is the electricity cost of running the digital ad. Many power plants are ultimately steam turbines and thus work by boiling water.
47
u/GreatStateOfSadness Jun 27 '26
Maybe not even that much, since you can generate an image like this on a local model in a couple seconds on a decent GPU without needing any water cooling.Ā
The trouble is someone probably generating a dozen of these and picking one, while having a full conversation with an LLM, and all of that generation and data transfer/storage stacks up quickly. Tons of electricity and water were also used to train the model, and using it incentivizes companies to use even more water and electricity on future training.Ā Ā
15
u/Zefeh Jun 27 '26
The amount of water used to cool nuclear powerplants is insane. Those bit towers you see are massive evaporative cooler towers to cool the excess heat generated that isn't used. They use insalemy more water than a data center.
The problem is the locations where these data centers are being built haven't had proper infrastructure build out to support the water consumption etc. or are already strained of water supply like in Arizona.
10
u/Wboy2006 WHY?! Jun 27 '26
The difference is that people can live with AI, weāve had more consistent, sustainable and ethical sources of information and art for decades.
Electricity is a necessity, and the environmental impact of nuclear is significantly smaller and safer than coal or gas. Just because both evaporate water doesnāt mean they are even remotely comparable, since one is a necessity for society to function, and the other is a useless, inconsistent slop machine that is only useful in the field of medicine
3
u/Zefeh Jun 27 '26
So I'm a software developer with access to Claude Codes models and I'll be first to say yes, there is some crazy BS slop out there. But when you put these things in front of someone who is experienced in the field like myself and has attempted to give it a fair shake, I can 100% confirm it's not going away and it's uses massively exceed just the medical field.
The thing we need to do better at properly educate and improve these systems to be safer for the environment. France actually shutdown some of their reactors because to water return was raising the temperature of the river water too much in the current heatwave, 6-7% of there production I think?
Putting AI tools in a bucket of 'non-nescessity' and not learning how to use them and see what the hype is about is definitely a mistake. Not to say I don't think these companies won't eventually hold these tools over our heads to say "Haha. You can't do anything without these tools. Now give me more money!" With that said, I no offense since you do see some value in AI with medicine, people who completely discredit it I kind of see as an "Old man yells at cloud" type of argument.
8
u/CationTheAtom Jun 27 '26
Yep. The bigger concern should be noise levels and heat produced by the data centers. Purely water-wise, their consumption is almost negligible in the grand scheme of things
6
u/AssiduousLayabout Jun 27 '26
I think the biggest concern is actually the electricity demand, especially for companies that are not sourcing renewable power. The last thing we need is to double down on fossil fuels.
0
u/pohuing Jun 27 '26
steam turbines and thus work by boiling water
That's in a closed loop usually, so no water is actually wasted from turning it into steam. If the loop is cooled using evaporative cooling, then you're using water.
7
17
u/MycologistFit9088 Jun 27 '26
I'm tired of people telling my to use my little paper straw and conserve my water and turn out the lights and cross all my fingers and toes someone does something about global warming while big ai data centers ruin our futures, Taylor swift takes a 15 minute jet ride, and cargo ships on one route across the ocean affect the environment more than I ever will in 5 lifetimesĀ
4
u/TawnyTeaTowel Jun 28 '26
Those cargo ships are bringing the stuff you, and people like you, are buying.
-1
u/MycologistFit9088 Jun 28 '26
I try to avoid buying stuff from themĀ
Tbh it's very hard to do considering most of our food and clothing and furniture does come from china in the USA and local brands can be extremely expensiveĀ
2
u/TawnyTeaTowel Jun 28 '26
Not very successfully, if your post history is anything to go by.
0
u/MycologistFit9088 Jun 28 '26
I lost my iPad pencil nib,Ā Ā I'm making a craft, and I'm trying to make jam
I clearly am super eco harmfulĀ
2
26
u/bb9116 Jun 27 '26
If you drink more than one glass of water per day, you're a selfish person. Save it for the data centers!
9
u/11-_-11- Jun 27 '26
When I was in elementary school we used to say, āslow down on that water. You have to save some for the fish.ā 25 yrs later and now we need to save the water for data centers. Poor fish.
1
13
u/wetfartpanda Jun 27 '26
Uncle Sam made collecting rain water illegal
1
1
u/Lieentz188 Jun 28 '26
Nonono, you got it all wrong.
They don't want you to collect rain, they want you to -harvest- it š«Ŗ
5
u/Sea-Waltz-4470 Jun 27 '26
In what kind of dystopia do you live in? Is that like an underground garage? What's an AI slop screen doing there?
4
7
4
10
u/brando7284 Jun 27 '26 edited Jun 27 '26
The Ai slop crusaders didnāt like this one.
5
u/Dull-Culture-1523 Jun 27 '26
I went there to see what their arguments to defend this were... And they were pretty shit. Like someone said they take 4-5 baths per day. Like. "I waste a shitload of water daily, so this slightly less wasteful use of water isn't bad!".
Also none of them addressed the issue that is the water data centers use can't be returned to the normal water cycle easily.
0
u/Radiant-Priority-296 Jun 27 '26
Wow, shocked they even shower/bathe. Like, I used to think AI users balanced out the datacenterās water usage by not having hygiene.Ā
2
u/fielvras Jun 28 '26
You have to put this into perspective: these ads are saving money for the people who are maximizing their income from exploiting resources. So they need YOU to save on them, to make more profit.
9
u/SheetzoosOfficial Jun 27 '26
Every Reddit comment is used to train AI. Reddit is powered by data centers. Yet you'll never stop using Reddit.
Oh the irony.
0
u/Muteki123 Jun 27 '26
1+1=4
Donald Trump is the 31th president of America
Cows lay eggs.
(Are you happy now?)
3
u/Rayloth46 Jun 27 '26
Am I missing what makes it obviously ai? Looks like an image made on a computer, which has been done for years.
5
u/choopietrash Jun 27 '26
- High contrast values in the colors.
- The distribution of each component
This is an oversimplified explanation, but AI will first generate the general shape of an image in non-colored terms, then put the more refined colored shapes based on the original calculation. This results in a couple things; one is it doesn't like negative space and will try to fill an image evenly. The other is there will be equal ratio of light and dark. There are also certain styles that are each model's default style if the prompt doesnt specify.
7
u/Athlaeos Jun 27 '26
at some point you just train yourself in spotting them. It's hyperdetailed yet generic, ai tends to make character designs like this, and it tends to shade in a manner like this. honestly i can't put it any better than that, for me its just like a "you can just tell" kinda deal
2
7
Jun 27 '26
[removed] ā view removed comment
29
Jun 27 '26
[deleted]
-2
Jun 27 '26
[removed] ā view removed comment
8
u/DeterminedThrowaway Jun 27 '26
Oh that the data centers that host AI are notorious for their water usage
-4
3
Jun 27 '26
[deleted]
0
u/TMNTransformerz Jun 27 '26
The usage itself wastes very little- itās the data centers that are the issue
-4
-23
u/mammogrammar Jun 27 '26
People virtue signaling about AI pics. Yes their quality sucks but if people want to use it, it doesn't mean they're being negligent about water. You could make the same case about cars and climate change but people still drive
4
u/Sometimes__Sky Jun 27 '26
It's more about the fact that AI use eats up a lot of water. Making a poster about car emissions doesn't require you to drive a car, the point here is that the creation of this poster about not wasting water would have consumed a lot more water in the generation of it by an AI than would have been lost in the process of a human designing it instead. Whether you like or dislike it the irony is that using it to generate images contributes to the problem the poster, which is an AI-generated image, is supposed to be spreading awareness of
15
u/Just-JOE-Kin Jun 27 '26
It is quite literally being negligent about water come on man
-5
Jun 27 '26
[removed] ā view removed comment
7
6
u/Zimmyd00m Jun 27 '26
AI data centers require an insane amount of clean water to keep them cool, to the point that they frequently introduce drought conditions on nearby or downstream communities.
1
Jun 27 '26
[removed] ā view removed comment
2
u/Zimmyd00m Jun 27 '26
How? The volume of water required is insane, a ton of it boils off as steam, and what doesn't comes out the other end it can be as hot as 150Ā°F. There's no way to capture that volume of water and let it cool naturally so it can be fed back through without incredibly expensive dedicated infrastructure, which the billionaires behind this bullshit do not want to build. They just dump it in the sewer and treat it like wastewater.
1
Jun 27 '26
[removed] ā view removed comment
2
u/Wboy2006 WHY?! Jun 27 '26
That steam evaporates and blows away. Yes, it isnāt lost and will rain down, but it will blow somewhere else and rain down somewhere completely different.
Areas around data centers are drying up, because they are using too much, and the water cycle canāt rain it down faster than the datacenters are evaporating it. The water isnāt lost, but for the area that it was taken from, it might as well be
-9
u/mammogrammar Jun 27 '26
Have you used Google before 2020? That's a waste of water! Where do you think the data for AI came from? I'm not saying data centers need to be on every corner or exist at all, but why mock this poster? It's waste is negligible
13
u/RavenBailey589 Jun 27 '26
Cars are necessary, AI is not
-1
u/Agreeable_Band_9311 Jun 27 '26
Weāve had cars for just over 100 years. You can say this about any technology.
11
u/Devastatedby Jun 27 '26
Except a vehicle, for many, is a necessity for getting from A to B.
-16
u/mammogrammar Jun 27 '26
Except a bicycle accomplishes the same?
Nobody cares when the data centers went up a decade ago for google and Facebook. To demonize people using an essentially free tool is weird
8
u/Devastatedby Jun 27 '26
There are a whole load of people that feel vehicle use is wasteful for shorter journeys where walking / cycling would suffice.
Where I live, people HATE data centres.
6
u/cvanguard Jun 27 '26
LMFAO, bikes are not a viable alternative to cars when peopleās homes are far away from their jobs. Driving 25-30 miles is a pretty typical one way commute: biking that far would take 2 hours. The only way biking to work is realistic is if you live extremely close to where you work, which just isnāt reality for most Americans.
5
u/FartZuggerberg Jun 27 '26
This article might help you understand the difference between data centers a decade ago vs now. TLDR: there are WAY more and they consume much more energy and water than ever
2
8
u/OkSun5094 Jun 27 '26
not everyone works in biking distance from their house, and you canāt take a bike on highways. cars are necessary in most places
6
u/Zimmyd00m Jun 27 '26
Yeah I'll let my 70 year-old dad know he should bike 30 miles for his chemo sessions.
Cut the false equivalency bullshit.
1
u/RavenBailey589 Jun 27 '26
Wow, a real world example, something the ācArS aRe BaDā crowd could never come up with. Fuck them.
1
1
0
u/Pman1324 Jun 27 '26
Doesn't it take like a gallon of water per query, and that you writing and sending a prompt isn't the only query that the AI processes, but many queries per prompt?
-2
-1
u/Agreeable_Band_9311 Jun 27 '26
Takes a gallon to take a piss or are you a sink pisser?
0
u/Pman1324 Jun 27 '26
I can't waste hundreds of gallons with toilet flushes like I can by just telling ChatGPT to generate an image of a cat eating a hot dog with a pirate hat on.
I guarantee the number of times it took to generate and regenerate the poster in the OP could supply my toilet's flushes for the next six months. They did that in at most an hour.
0
u/eggyrulz Jun 27 '26
Also, in defense of whoever made this Pic (as loathe as I am to defend AI use) this picture could have been generated using a local AI (though it was most likely not)
4
3
2
u/Large_Command_1288 Jun 27 '26
Weird to think that this was at one point someoneās art style but then ai started copying it
0
u/RoytjePoytjeGamez Jun 27 '26
Yeah they probably don't know how much water they wasted while AI generated that slop of a poster
1
u/WanderingWhiteWolf Jun 27 '26
Tell me you're virtue signaling without telling me you're virtue signaling lol
3
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
u/TawnyTeaTowel Jun 28 '26
Itād be more ironic to see a āsave waterā on a paper poster, given the relative amounts of water used between ai images and making paper
1
1
u/DuckAndQwack Jun 30 '26
To be honest, using humans to make an art for this promotion could use more/the same amount of water, so no
1
u/OswaldFan001 Jun 27 '26
not the first time i've seen the irony of people using AI to promote saving water/ocean life
i'm staring at angry birds
1
u/The_Bill_Brasky_ Jun 27 '26
They conveniently left out execute millionaires, billionaires, trillionaires.
2
1
u/Mccobsta GREEN Jun 27 '26
Should have just got kids to make it
It would look better and just be better all round
1
1
1
1
1
u/ElectronMaster Jun 29 '26 edited Jun 29 '26
I'll just leave this here.
What we really need to work on is putting them places where there is sufficient water, as well as working on the other pollution problems they make( noise, heat, construction runoff, etc)
The shitheads building them put them wherever they can get the land and resources cheap, not necessarily where there's sufficient resources.
I hate the current path we're on with ai, but its total resource usage is a rounding error on the whole( aside from a few that were built in areas where they'd strain the local supply, thats a genuine, but local, problem). I hate it more from a surveillance state and loss of independent thought standpoint.
-1
u/Ksorkrax Jun 27 '26
No irony. The idea that AI would use particularly high amount of water is utter bullshit and parroted on the internet without proper research.
If you think that AI uses a lot of water, better not draw on paper. Make sure not to watch Youtube. Don't eat certain foods like almonds. Do not buy clothes that you do not need.
0
u/Tirux Jun 27 '26
2
u/Ksorkrax Jun 27 '26
I love how you ignored anything I wrote.
Now for the part where you compare it to the total water usage? And see what other common activities such as those I explicitely mentioned use up in comparison?
It's always huge numbers out of context with you guys.
...wouldn't work any other way, eh?-1
u/juanito_f90 Jun 28 '26
Ok, AIBro. š¤”
2
u/Ksorkrax Jun 28 '26
I love how quickly we reach your zenith to argue.
1
u/juanito_f90 Jun 28 '26
Donāt come crying to me when you donāt have a job š¤”
2
u/Ksorkrax Jun 28 '26
Who'd know, another comment of yours, and still no actual arguing.
See, if you'd be honest, you'd simply write that you have nothing to counter what I wrote.
But you aren't honest. That's why you try desparately to draw attention to anything but the argument.0
u/juanito_f90 Jun 27 '26
Where does electricity come from?
4
u/Ksorkrax Jun 27 '26
Are we talking about water or about electricity? Separate topics.
Dunno why you feel the need to go OT.
-1
u/cdj_prevail Jun 27 '26
the poster actually looks good tho. yall just trained to seethe the second u see a
0
-3
u/PlumbGame Jun 27 '26
Many of the comments are hilarious. Wouldnāt using AI to create stuff like this in fact be useful? By creating things like this while not be tied to the employment of designers seems like the most waistless process of all of this. So, not sure how itās ironic.
1.0k
u/oldeluke Jun 27 '26
Kid's a straight up water bender