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Earlier this year, MIT Technology Review published a comprehensive series on AI and energy, at which time none of the major AI companies would reveal their per-prompt energy usage. Google’s new publication, at last, allows for a peek behind the curtain that researchers and analysts have long hoped for. Read the full story.

According to a Thursday blog post, Google is beginning to roll out agentic capabilities to its AI Mode. For now, the only agentic capability available is restaurant reservations. Users will be able to ask AI mode to find them a reservation that matches their specific needs, including party size, date, time, location, and preferred food type.

For a while now, the tech industry has been shifting into the “agentic AI’ era. Simply put, it’s where an AI performs a multi-step task for you, like acting on a request such as “reserve a table for six at the nearest ramen shop with at least a 4-start rating on Wednesday.

But it's difficult to know for certain without access to the sorts of details that you'd only get by running a data center, such as how often the hardware is in use, and how often it's serving AI queries.

F or the climate concerned, the rise of the AI-reliant internet query is a cause for alarm. Many people have turned to ChatGPT and other services for simple questions. And even basic Google searches include an AI-derived result.

In Google’s new AI environmental impact research, these calculations were based on the company's average carbon intensity and water usage effectiveness across its portfolio.

Amid growing concerns about the environmental impact of artificial intelligence, Google says it has calculated the energy required for its Gemini AI service: Sending a single text prompt consumes as much energy as watching television for nine seconds.