At LiveImpact.io, we’ve heard the questions about AI and the environment and they’re fair. This page explains why we chose to use AI to build the platform, how we kept our footprint low, and why we believe the bigger environmental risk isn’t AI... it’s doing nothing.

FAQ: Isn’t AI Bad for the Environment? Why Use It to Build LiveImpact.io?

Short answer: Yes, AI uses energy. But so does everything we do online from checking email to streaming a movie. The real question is how we use AI, what it replaces, and what impact it helps make possible.

Why We Chose to Use AI

LiveImpact.io was built by one founder using AI as a strategic and creative partner. That means:

• No office space

• No travel

• No full-time development team

• No oversized infrastructure or bloated processes

We’ve built this platform faster, with fewer resources, and at a fraction of the environmental and financial cost of a traditional tech startup.

How Big Is AI’s Environmental Footprint?

The media headlines can be alarming—but it’s important to look at scale and nuance:

• Yes, an AI query (like a ChatGPT prompt) uses roughly 5–10x more energy than a standard Google search
  → MIT Technology Review, Jan 2025

• However, generating content or ideas using AI has a dramatically lower CO₂ footprint compared to traditional human workflows.
  A peer-reviewed study found that AI content generation produces 130 to 1,500 times less CO₂ than doing the same task manually.
  → Nature Scientific Reports, 2024

• Most AI tools, including the ones we use, run on hyperscale cloud infrastructure like Google Cloud, AWS, and Azure, which are among the most energy-efficient systems on the planet. Many are already powered by 100% renewable energy or are aggressively moving in that direction.
  → Google Cloud Sustainability
  → Microsoft Sustainability Report

The Bigger Picture: What AI Replaces

Using AI helped us avoid things that typically have a much higher environmental cost, such as:

• Dozens of cross-country or international business trips

• A team of full-time employees commuting daily

• Energy-intensive offices and co-working spaces

• Physical materials (print collateral, notes, brainstorming boards, etc.)

Put simply, AI replaced waste not people. And it accelerated our ability to launch a civic platform that helps people take real-world action on causes they care about.

Why We Think This Tradeoff Is Worth It

LiveImpact.io exists to help people do things that matter - vote, donate, volunteer, speak up, reduce waste, plant gardens, support justice and see the real-world impact of those actions.

If AI helped us build that system faster, smarter, and more sustainably? We’re okay with that.

And unlike most tech platforms, we don’t run energy-intensive algorithms to serve ads or keep people scrolling. There’s no feed, no surveillance capitalism, no endless data mining. Just a simple idea: You act. We count. The world sees.™

Our Commitment Moving Forward

We’ll continue to:

• Use only high-efficiency, cloud-based infrastructure

• Avoid unnecessary features or processes that increase resource usage

• Explore carbon offsets and sustainable tech partnerships as we grow

We're not claiming AI is perfect. But used wisely, we believe it can be part of the climate solution, not just part of the problem.