Oxford lecturer warns of hidden environmental cost behind viral AI deepfake videos

The rise of artificial intelligence (AI) video tools has flooded social media with deepfake clips — some so realistic they feature deceased celebrities and historical figures in fabricated and often controversial scenes.

Platforms such as OpenAI’s Sora have gone viral for their ability to generate hyper-realistic videos, prompting concern from the families of figures like Dr Martin Luther King Jr, who have appealed to AI companies to prevent the use of their loved ones’ likenesses, BBC writes. 

However, beyond the emotional and ethical debates, an academic from the University of Oxford is drawing attention to another consequence: the environmental toll of producing such videos.

Dr Kevin Grecksch, a lecturer at Oxford, warned that there is “quite a huge hidden impact on the environment” when it comes to AI-generated videos.

“Somewhere these videos have to be produced — and that’s typically not on your phone,” he explained. “It happens in a data centre which could be somewhere across the world, or maybe just around the corner, you never know. First of all that uses up a lot of electricity and secondly it uses a lot of water.”

Data centres — which power the AI tools behind these viral creations — require vast amounts of fresh water to cool their servers.

The surge in AI-generated content has been rapid. Earlier this month, Sora was downloaded more than a million times in under five days, remaining at the top of the Apple App Store charts in the US. The app’s accessibility has contributed to a flood of deepfake videos circulating online.

Dr Grecksch urged users to consider the environmental footprint of their digital habits.

“There’s a lot of water involved and I think we just need to think about what we’re using it for, how we’re using it, and how often we’re using it,” he said.

He acknowledged that “the cat was out of the sack” when it comes to AI’s rapid expansion, but called for “a little bit more integrated thinking around where we put data centres and how we are cooling them”.

“The government sees south Oxfordshire as one of the first AI growth areas, but that’s a massive problem because apparently no one has thought where the water is going to come from that’s going to cool down those servers,” Dr Grecksch added. “There’s a lot of questions we need to think about.”

By Sabina Mammadli