This year has been full of new smartphone releases and serious progress in technology and Artificial Intelligence (AI) spaces. In exploring the new releases from Samsung, Apple and Google, their advances in AI were there undeniable selling points across the board. In looking at their AI systems and improvements, it was impossible to ignore the increasing knowledge and evidence surrounding AI’s impact on the climate crisis, with its negative consequences incredibly concerning even with companies creating AI models and solutions specifically to help us navigate ways to alleviate the crisis.
The Samsung S24 Ultra
The Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra, released on the 31st of January 2024, features a range of AI functions to enhance user experience. “Circle to Search” allows you to find information about images or text with a swipe of the finger. “Browsing Assist” summarises online content for you, while “Live Translate” provides real-time text translation for phone calls. “Transcript Assist” turns voice notes and conversations into text, and “Note Assist” helps generate summaries, templates, and note covers. “Chat Assist” facilitates cross-language communication and suggests grammar corrections.
The Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra also offers photo editing suggestions and generative photo editing, enabling users to enhance images and create backgrounds by analysing and modifying content automatically.
The iPhone 16 Pro Max
The iPhone 16 Pro Max emphasises AI integration as central to its user experience. It was released on the 20th of September this year, and while full functionality will roll out later this fall, the public beta version of Apple Intelligence currently offers AI-assisted writing tools, enhanced Siri features (including a more natural voice and contextual conversations), and photo editing options like the “Clean Up” tool to remove unwanted elements from images. You can request instant movie memories in Photos and receive AI-generated summaries in Messages, Mail, and Notes. Apple Intelligence operates on-device or via Apple’s Private Cloud Compute, depending on the task, and supports third-party AI services, with ChatGPT being the first announced integration.
The Google Pixel 9 Pro XL
The Google Pixel 9 Pro XL was released on the 22nd of August this year, and includes Gemini, which is a generative AI that aims to replace the traditional Google Assistant on Android phones and tablets. Key features include the Pixel Studio app for creating AI-generated images, and Pixel Screenshots, which organises and allows you to search through your screenshots. The weather app offers AI-generated daily summaries, while Call Notes enables call recording and summarization. Gemini also allows users to inquire about on-screen content through a pop-up overlay. Further, the “Add me” feature combines photos to ensure everyone is included in group shots, and the “Reimagine” tool lets you creatively alter objects in images.
The Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra, iPhone 16 Pro Max, and Google Pixel 9 Pro XL all champion their AI developments as the future of smartphones and technology as we know it. All of them, in their own ways, advance accessibility and versatility in regard to communication and translation, photo editing and creative processes, while making access to information faster and easier than ever before for the user.
AI and the Climate
It’s no secret that AI training and use burns through energy resources. For instance, The Verge reports that “training a large language model like GPT-3, for example, is estimated to use just under 1,300 megawatt hours (MWh) of electricity; about as much power as consumed annually by 130 US homes.” In July of this year, it was reported that Google’s emissions had climbed nearly 50% in five years due to AI energy demands from its data centres that support AI products. The International Energy Agency projects that data centres’ electricity use could double by 2026, driven in part by AI, which may account for 4.5% of global energy generation by 2030. The International Energy Agency reports that “If ChatGPT were integrated into the 9 billion searches done each day, the electricity demand would increase by 10 terawatt-hours a year — the amount consumed by about 1.5 million European Union residents.” As tech’s efforts to reduce climate footprints are being seriously challenged as AI moves to the forefront, AI does have the potential to support the climate crisis in important ways too, if managed correctly.
Earlier this year, The World Economic Forum cited that AI systems have been trained to measure changes in icebergs 10,000 times faster than a human could, map the impact of deforestation, analyse waste processing and recycling facilities to help them recover and recycle more waste material, and much more. Microsoft has also signed a 20-year agreement to exclusively access 835 megawatts of energy from the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant, which is set to be revived if regulators approve the plan as it hosted the one of the worst nuclear accidents on US soil when a partial meltdown of one of its reactors occurred in 1979. The deal with Constellation, the plant’s owner, aims to have the facility operational by 2028, providing all its output to power Microsoft’s AI data centres. The plant can generate enough energy for over 800,000 homes, further emphasising the significant power demands of AI infrastructure; however, Bobby Hollis, Microsoft’s VP of energy, emphasised that this agreement marks a crucial step in decarbonizing the energy grid. While nuclear power plants do not pollute the air or emit greenhouse gases, they do produce radioactive waste which can be extremely toxic to people who are exposed to it.
While new smartphones exemplify the potential of AI to improve accessibility and efficiency, the environmental concerns associated with AI’s energy consumption cannot be overlooked. Training large AI models is resource-intensive, contributing significantly to carbon emissions from data centres, even as Initiatives emerge where AI is used to monitor environmental changes and find solutions to mitigate other human contributions to the climate crisis. While the latest smartphones leverage AI to enhance user experience, the environmental impact of AI technologies poses significant challenges that need to be managed and monitored openly and responsibly.
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Acknowledgement of Country
Attractor Solutions is located on the unceded lands of the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung people. We acknowledge and respect them as the Traditional Owners of the land on which we work, and pay our respects to their Elders, past and present.
