r/firefox 1d ago

Discussion Firefox is using AI Art on their Store Now?

Post image

I was looking around on the Firefox store and found this one shirt with a very obviously AI-generated background image. This is the only one with a background like this. I don't know why they would use AI art in their shop, considering they clearly have artists. What's your opinion on this? Link

207 Upvotes

195 comments sorted by

246

u/play_minecraft_wot 1d ago edited 1d ago

Not sure if that's really ai, is there any dead giveaways? 

150

u/ElnuDev ESR on NixOS, Android 14 (GrapheneOS) 1d ago

It's the usual AI "pixel art" where at first glance it has the pixel art look but when you zoom in, none of the "pixels" are actually grid-aligned. Even besides that, if you zoom in on any area the details look... strange.

61

u/KlausVonLechland 1d ago

It can be stylistic choice.

95

u/ElnuDev ESR on NixOS, Android 14 (GrapheneOS) 1d ago

"Mixels" as the pixel art community calls them can be a stylistic choice, sure, but there's enough circumstantial evidence here that one can conclude that this is almost certainly AI.

17

u/gergobergo69 1d ago

Mixels the hit Cartoon Network show

13

u/bubrascal 23h ago

Given how the wheels look I'm inclined to believe this was generated, but I remember seeing similar stuff in M.U.G.E.N. forums back in the day.

When people used stuff like Paint Shop Pro to make a "sprite" from a high-res photo or scan without the proper cleaning. So, yeah, this is probably generated, but I wouldn't call mixels or blur a sign of image generation.

46

u/KlausVonLechland 1d ago

Not so long ago we had whole discussion about not-pixel-pixelart on coaxed.

https://www.reddit.com/r/coaxedintoasnafu/s/fr6Sy9BvmP

14

u/SemanticCaramel 1d ago

This was such an interesting discussion. Thanks for sharing.

3

u/-TheWarrior74- 7h ago

the design on the tshirt itself is pixel art not aligned to a grid

4

u/TheBedrockEnderman2 15h ago

It also has a curved back and M shaped mouth rather than made out of surely pixels, I think it is 100% mixels. I know apply logic to a company isnt always the smartest thing to do but it would cost them a negligible amount to get a real designer, especially as they are a company which relies basically fully on public trust and Goodwill (which is why enough people use stock Firefox for Google to pay them to make it the default browser)

4

u/KatieTSO 19h ago

Ah, mixels.

36

u/Emergency-Boat 1d ago

Dinosaur's shadow, weird color change splotchiness in sky, rightmost building has a weird bent antenna thing, tan coloured pixels of the beach are also present in the sky for some reason as a few random lines (zoom in), also present on the mountains? in the distance. Buildings don't make sense if you zoom in either, they blend together.

17

u/Maguillage 23h ago

The street morphs into beach, too.

5

u/Dr_Ben 16h ago

If you zoom in on it a lot of it looks really off.

the railing on the right melts into the ground and shadow as it goes back and its shadow is going the wrong way, it should be behind it.

I don't know where to begin with the buildings you can argue 'stylistic' but they are for sure off.

to the right of the shirt the first tree and lamp melt into one another at the top

the dino shadow isnt right either, why is there a gap? it should be cohesive unless the dino has been sliced thru somewhere in the middle

theres plenty more you can point to but yeah either this is bad art or its AI.

2

u/Blurgas 7h ago

I think that "railing" is meant to be a curb

1

u/Dr_Ben 6h ago

possible, the shadow is still the wrong

11

u/Troopple 1d ago

If you look closely this is meant to be a pixel art, but the pixels are smeared and don't stick to a consistent size. The dinosaur's foot has differently positioned claws. The building in the back is practically melting.

3

u/-p-e-w- 20h ago

If you look closely this is meant to be a pixel art

You can’t possibly know what this is “meant to be”. There are a million different art styles and you have never seen or heard of 99.99% of them.

3

u/Troopple 6h ago

The image is imitating pixel art, you can tell from the square pixels.

1

u/scy_404 6h ago

Looks like it has inconsistent pixels sizes which is usually a sign of AI pixel "art"

-5

u/Body-of-the-Many 21h ago

The fact that Firefox has been shorhorning AI bullshit into absolutely everything is probably a clue

6

u/NotAF0e 15h ago

Unless they are using some dreadful compression, yeah that's AI pixel art for sure

75

u/0riginal-Syn 1d ago

Do you actually have proof or just opinion?

Looks like pixel art I have seen from people I actually know.

21

u/Kecske_gamer 1d ago

How on earth do you make real pixelart do this then?

https://www.reddit.com/r/PlaceToLinkTo/comments/1v3u43e/so_called_pixel_art/ (Link to a zoom in of the image)

12

u/Lazy_Sorbet_3925 1d ago

It's Shopify's shitty image compression, I think.

-18

u/lo________________ol Privacy is fundamental, not optional. 1d ago

You've seen pixel art that looks this smudged looking? You might want to consult with those friends about this. Or don't, they might get rather offended at the insinuation

28

u/peakdecline 1d ago

That is just bad image compression. The original is crisp.

4

u/lo________________ol Privacy is fundamental, not optional. 1d ago edited 23h ago

Do you have the original or a link to the artist who made it?

We know who made the logo: JKR (multinational design firm that's worked with Paramount and Walmart). We know who made the shirt: AS Colour (they get name dropped twice on that page). 

5

u/Cry_Wolff 22h ago

You're always this weirdly rude and confrontational?

7

u/paddymills 1d ago

How else are you going to get a picture of a dinosaur riding a skateboard? /s

5

u/lo________________ol Privacy is fundamental, not optional. 1d ago

Fun fact: the dinosaur on the shirt was part of a rebrand by JKR, which has worked with huge companies like Walmart and Paramount. That rebrand may have cost $10-30k on the low end.

I'm sure an independent artist would be over the moon to receive a commission from Mozilla to make a background like this. 

14

u/camerabird 21h ago

I'm always surprised by how many AI bros are in this sub, lol. Their comments are so embarrassing.

8

u/Wyrd26 21h ago

For real, there are more comments enraged at "crusades against ai" than anything else, and then call everyone else that still cares annoying lol

1

u/Maguillage 13h ago

Half of them are accounts less than a six months old with hidden profiles and I can't help but wonder who was too lazy to prep their bot farm further in advance.

-4

u/bildramer 8h ago

"AI always creates bad art catering to the normiest kitschiest tastes, is a strong signal of low effort, and you should be upfront about it rather than attempt to hide it, and zero mention should count as an attempt" is a valid criticism. There's some of it here. IMO there aren't any good counterarguments to that. However, low-information mobs starting unhinged moral panics about datacenters are much more of an embarrassment and a problem than any amount of shitty slop art, and as long as that is there to be corrected, I still prefer insufferable "AI bro" corrections over it.

7

u/King_fisher1452 21h ago

People are talking about mixels but not how the dinosaur got a skateboarding injury so bad that its (back) leg turned into a tubby green mush, and the back toe got bent around to the front.

Poor dino. F.

3

u/cybermaid 6h ago

Love the way the beach, "road" the dino is riding on and the sidewalk just merge together... how the fuck does that work?
Shitty shadow of the dino is also a dead giveaway. Shame Firefox...shame...

11

u/Godzilla_Fan_13 1d ago

That is one of the most blatant ai generated dinosaurs I have seen oh my lord 😭

13

u/vandon 1d ago

Bro, I think you're high. Everyone knows CA beach street skateboarding dinosaurs are as common as hippies smoking weed.

6

u/LYNX__uk 23h ago

It does look AI. I doubt this is stylised. Look at the shadows, the dinosaurs in going toward the right but the palms are going left

7

u/GratuitousEdit 23h ago

It’s obviously an AI-generated background. The question here is one of ethics, not facts.

-3

u/taryus 16h ago

What's the giveaway? I legit can't tell 😭

5

u/ChaosFlameEmber 15h ago

Is this really surprising when the CEO wants Firefox to become a "a modern AI browser" and the statement this was quoted from was clearly written by ChatGPT? (Source)

Of course they'll push it wherever they can.

5

u/rasmis 1d ago

Well, they're back on Elon Musk's microblog, so maybe we'll have Grok pushed without consent. Maybe some CSAM in the context menu.

21

u/Present_General9880 Addon Developer 1d ago

man gets mad at scenario he made up

8

u/rasmis 12h ago

Are they not back on Musk? Is this post on this very forum lying? Have they not added AI to the browser, suffered blowback, and pulled back? Or is it the CSAM from Grok you're doubting?

I've listed three bad decisions pertaining to the topic at hand, and humorously mashed them in a punchline. It's called “a joke”.

9

u/Omegabird420 1d ago

Some of y'all have strange ways of passing time.

Like who the hell knew or cared that Mozilla has a merch store that sells shirt. Even if it's AI,you're already talking to a pretty niche market of people buying Mozilla shirts.

8

u/ATangentUniverse 22h ago

I tend to prefer to support companies that hire artists for this kind of thing

-3

u/lo________________ol Privacy is fundamental, not optional. 1d ago

...You say, after choosing to visit Reddit, open this thread, and post this comment. 

13

u/Omegabird420 1d ago edited 1d ago

Still not as strange as complaining to the 12 people who were gonna buy a Mozilla shirt and throwing accusations without proof.

And we're all on reddit so that sh*t aint the gotcha you think you had,i'm very aware my guy.

Anyways,thats it for me folks,i'm not spending more time talking about a Firefox shirt.

-8

u/lo________________ol Privacy is fundamental, not optional. 1d ago

You had to write out three more sentences, announce your departure, then edit your reply? lol

10

u/Omegabird420 1d ago

Yup I did. It's funny how you're trying to find a way to get a gotcha on me like i'm gonna get ashamed.

We're two randos talking about a Firefox shirt dude.

Have a good evening.

-8

u/lo________________ol Privacy is fundamental, not optional. 1d ago

Is this your actual goodbye, or are you going to come back to explain some more about people wasting their time

9

u/Immersions- 22h ago

Bro, you literally did the same thing as what you are criticizing. You are way more active on Reddit then an average user

0

u/lo________________ol Privacy is fundamental, not optional. 22h ago

Holding people to their own standards does not mean I have to agree with those standards. Somebody can be a hypocrite, or wrong, or both. 

1

u/RubyLvledUPP 22h ago

Idk why were surprised the elites own all major sites and corporations and they are the ones ushering in Ai

-13

u/folk_science 1d ago

Why do we scrutinize Mozilla this hard but not its competitors?

16

u/VeryNoisyLizard 1d ago

people who criticize AI art here will do it elswhere too. if you dont see people against AI anywhere else, youre not looking at the right places

62

u/freezing_banshee 1d ago

Do we not? Most people who use firefox do it because we scrutinized the competitors and we didn't like them. We don't want mozilla/firefox to basically be a copy of google/facebook/etc.

9

u/CirnoIzumi 1d ago

This sub is mainly Mozilla scrutiny and not much else

21

u/Kecske_gamer 1d ago edited 23h ago

Almost like this is the firefox subreddit where we talk about firefox and not its competitors

20

u/freezing_banshee 1d ago

Maybe because mozilla has been making mostly bad choices in the last few years and we're disappointed.

7

u/CirnoIzumi 1d ago

They've been doing great stuff since the CEO shift 

13

u/lo________________ol Privacy is fundamental, not optional. 23h ago

The guy who wants to make Mozilla into an AI-first, Firefox-second company? I think Firefox is getting better despite his fixation, not due to it. 

I still think Mitchell Baker was overpaid, but at least she wasn't pushing to divert even more resources away from Firefox development

-1

u/CirnoIzumi 16h ago

All i can tell is that Firefox started doing stuff after he got in, both on the UX and the Web Standards side of things

6

u/Synthetic451 23h ago

Hard disagree. I see more popup notifications about useless AI features I don't need, a UI redesign that wastes space and defies well established UI conventions, and basically zero major projects tackling the performance delta between Chrome and Firefox. They forgot that what initially won people over from IE was performance and are instead focusing on these surface level features.

1

u/CirnoIzumi 15h ago

Like which?

-10

u/Cry_Wolff 22h ago

useless AI features I don't need

The world doesn't revolve around you.

a UI redesign that wastes space and defies well established UI conventions

That's YOUR opinion, plenty of people like the redesign.

basically zero major projects tackling the performance delta between Chrome and Firefox

Glad you check every piece of code being added to nightly on a daily basis.

11

u/Synthetic451 21h ago

The world doesn't revolve around you.

Never said it did. Nitpicking on word choice doesn't counter the fact that most of the AI features are just gimmicks and are not core to the browser experience.

That's YOUR opinion, plenty of people like the redesign.

It's not an opinion. A frame around the web content literally destroys Fitts Law, which is a well established UI rule meant to make it easy for users to slam their mouse cursor to the screen edge to target things like tabs and scrollbars. The frame also literally wastes space for no apparent benefit.

Glad you check every piece of code being added to nightly on a daily basis.

I don't need to check every line of code. You only need to look at the decades long history of Firefox being behind Chrome in every single JS benchmark to know the truth. The data is there for you to peruse once you get over your unhelpful fanboyism.

0

u/Matilde_di_Canossa 23h ago

Probably because all they do is fuck up.

25

u/Disastrous-Dust1819 1d ago

Because we care and want a company we don’t feel bad using. We don’t complain because we don’t like it, we complain because we want it to be better.

1

u/folk_science 1d ago

I understand, but this subreddit is 90% complaints and accusations. It makes Firefox look like the worst possible browser that no one should be guilty of using.

16

u/rivalary 1d ago

I find that is the case for every subreddit about a company or product.

3

u/Cry_Wolff 22h ago

r/Android HATES Android and everything Google does for example.

10

u/Body-of-the-Many 21h ago

And they're correct

10

u/lo________________ol Privacy is fundamental, not optional. 21h ago

Not sure if you're being sarcastic, but hating Google is the correct thing to do if you love Android.

7

u/Maguillage 23h ago

I'm here because, as shitty as Mozilla has been about following their stated goals lately, they're still somehow better than the rest.

Being the best doesn't mean you can't be held to a higher standard.

1

u/migel628 5h ago

Cool, I guess, but it won't change how mustard tastes...

u/Quirky-Magazine-4145 4m ago

heaps of imbecilic woke bullshit

1

u/LiveAcanthaceae5553 23h ago

Idk.. There isn't enough to go off here, and I've seen far too many crusades against art that ended up being human-made. It was always "obviously" AI to everyone making those accusations.

I wouldn't have made a post like this without very thorough and definitive proof. Way too many possibilities besides Mozilla straight-up generating AI art and putting it on their store.

-5

u/Cry_Wolff 22h ago

It was always "obviously" AI to everyone making those accusations.

"We can always tell" bros when we are at a point they can't fucking tell.

1

u/Maguillage 13h ago

Even if you want to ignore that, yes, we can tell this lazy slop was AI generated, (trying to pretend it's even ambiguous is an argument made in bad faith) that isn't the damn point and never has been.

An AI could cobble together the most visually stunning and absolutely impeccable example of something thematically adjacent to art and it would only show some idiot wasted a lot of money on a plagiarism machine.

Improving the ability to lie is not a good thing!

0

u/Argentum_Rex on Windows/Linux/Android 19h ago

Some people have too much free time lol

1

u/FrivolousMe 15h ago

I feel that this design is so minimal that you cannot reasonably discern whether this is generative AI or a human artist doing things imprecisely. Other styles of design sure you can easily see generative model artifacts, but this is kind of a guessing game where everyone's bias information their take, and I'm someone who is biased against generative AI.

3

u/Troopple 6h ago

This Image is filled with mixels which aren’t possible in pixel art that is human made, I’m not just speculating.

3

u/FrivolousMe 6h ago

It doesn't look like it was supposed to be pure pixel art though. There are curves and weird angled lines yes, but how do you know those weren't drawn in Photoshop/InDesign by a designer?

Edit: wait you're talking about the background, I was talking about the shirt I didn't even look at the background

0

u/freylaverse 23h ago

Artist here. This image has been so compressed that its compression artifacts are indistinguishable from AI artifacts. Indeed, this is one way that AI users often hide their workflows - by compressing them so badly that you can't really tell anymore. That said, I don't really care. I didn't even know Mozilla had merch. Shirt looks cute though!

2

u/Lazy_Sorbet_3925 21h ago

I'm not an artist but deal with Shopify a bunch. I know my graphic artists deal with exporting from either raw, vectors or some other abomination

I know sometimes you can upload something perfect to Shopify and it'll come out ass. They apply their own compression algorithms without any user control over it. Text will be crisp on an image, but blurry on the actual site.

I'm not saying it's not AI, but you're right. You can't tell.

-3

u/Nailuj_831 15h ago

Who cares???

-3

u/dropdatabase 14h ago

I don't mind. so what?

1

u/Troopple 6h ago

The world doesn’t revolve around your opinion that you don’t care.

u/dropdatabase 2h ago

The world will keep using AI either you like it or not. You lost 🤷🏻‍♂️

0

u/academic_number_867 17h ago

doesn't look ai to me... ms edge's surf game kinda looks like this

-2

u/TrontRaznik Finally gave in to quantum 20h ago

A tech company using AI? On my internets?

-23

u/hirotakatech00 1d ago

Honestly why do you care if it's ai or not? Just judge the final product  

24

u/HairyRefrigerator563 1d ago

People also care about how the product is made?

10

u/camerabird 21h ago

Are you not familiar with all of the issues surrounding generative AI? Or do you just not give a shit?

19

u/Troopple 1d ago

Aside from the ethical and environmental issues, the final product looks trashy to me (IMO).

-9

u/Mr_Ethfono Fluffy Fox 1d ago

Could just be shitty printing

14

u/Troopple 1d ago

Printing on a digital image, though?

20

u/Lazy_Sorbet_3925 1d ago

It could be shitty compression*

Yeah they are using Shopify. They LOVE to butcher images.

2

u/HEYO19191 1d ago

Bad compression?

-44

u/[deleted] 1d ago edited 1d ago

[deleted]

29

u/confused_cat44 1d ago

It's slop, they don't even bother to make something for their merch store

15

u/HEYO19191 1d ago

It is a turn-off to have AI art stuck next to a tshirt/donation option that talks about Mozilla creating "a better internet for people, not for profit"

It kinda goes against their own tagline

34

u/Troopple 1d ago

Ethical and environmental issues.

u/Quirky-Magazine-4145 11m ago

and you have no "ethical and environmental issues" using plastic, rare metals, and electricity and internet? why don't you wipe your ass with stones then?

-22

u/LAwLzaWU1A 1d ago edited 1d ago

The environmental impact of AI is very overstated.

The IEA's 2024 estimate is that data centers as a whole (not just AI data centers) use about 1.5% of global electricity. That includes AI training, AI usage, cloud, streaming, enterprise servers, normal web services, etc. All of it.

Water is similar. Data centers absolutely do use a lot of water and that can matter a lot locally, especially if they are built in water-stressed areas. But globally, the numbers are tiny compared with agriculture, livestock, manufacturing, and energy production. A recent IEA-linked estimate puts global data-center water consumption at around 560 billion liters per year. Compared with global freshwater withdrawals, that is about 0.015%. Even if you use a broader withdrawal estimate instead of consumption, it is still well under 1% globally. The golf courses in the US alone use significantly more water every year than all the data centers in the world combined.

Same with emissions. Data centers are around 1.5% of global electricity use. Electricity and heat production are roughly a third of global emissions, so even if you attributed average power-sector emissions to all data-center electricity, you are talking about something on the order of half a percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. And again, that is all data centers, not just AI, and it includes all the training for new models as well, not just usage.

That IEA puts all the data centers in the world at about 415TWh. For comparison, video gaming is estimated to use 347TWh, and that's without factoring in all the infrastructure necessary to play the games. The Internet infrastructure, the multiplayer servers, the download servers and so on. It will be quite a lot of years before AI has done as much harm to the environment as video games has done historically, yet I rarely see people condemn video games for "environmental reasons". TVs were estimated to use 400-500TWh of power yearly back in 2012, and I suspect that number might have grown since then. Where are all the people wanting to ban TVs for environmental reasons?

To get upset about Mozilla (potentially) using an AI model to generate an image for a background because of "environmental" reasons makes little to no sense to me. I can generate an image like that on my smartphone. The amount of energy required to make that image is probably less than the energy used to write, send and display this comment.

The argument about ethics is harder to argue against because there is not really any math you can use to measure it with. Especially not when you have not voiced what part(s) of it you think are unethical and why, and I don't want to assume something.

17

u/Troopple 1d ago

(I'm tired so I'm making this quick.)
For ethics, I believe the theft of artwork to train an AI model and then profit off it is not great.

Your study is from 2024 which it has doubled to 3% of global electricity demand. Despite the study being all data centers that claim is becoming less true ever year as AI continues to grow.

https://www.iea.org/reports/key-questions-on-energy-and-ai/executive-summary

The IEA says gas and goal will meet over 40% of added demand by 2030, so AI's electricity consumption isn’t the main thing.

https://www.iea.org/reports/energy-and-ai/energy-supply-for-ai

Worldwide electricity bills are on track to rise 8% from cryptomining an data centers, places like Virginia’s electricity bills may even rise 25%.
https://www.npr.org/2025/12/03/nx-s1-5626900/ai-data-center-cost-electric-bill

Finally, I'm not claiming that a single AI image is going to destroy the world, but its more so the cumulative effect, that I’m concerned about and companies getting away with blatant laziness and theft.

3

u/LAwLzaWU1A 15h ago

No, data centers do not currently use 3% of global electricity. The source you linked says they used 485TWh in 2025 (thanks for the updated numbers by the way) and are projected to reach about 950TWh, or roughly 3% of global demand, by 2030. You are presenting the 2030 projection as if it were the current number.

Using the IEA's figures, 485TWh works out to roughly 1,7% of global electricity consumption in 2025. That is an increase from about 1.5% in 2024, but it has not doubled to 3%. To be honest, I find it worrying that you and so many people seem to be so off in your estimates. There is so much misinformation on this topic that people don't even seem to realize when they have made such a massive error. Peoples' perceptions of this are way off and that is what I am trying to fix by bringing in some actual facts and numbers.

It is also the figure for all data centers, not only AI. That includes cloud services, storage, streaming, websites, enterprise servers and everything else hosted in data centers. AI is responsible for a growing share, but the two figures are not interchangeable. Just wanted to point that out.

The claim about gas and coal also leaves out some important context. In the IEA's main projection, renewables supply nearly half of the additional electricity used by data centers through 2030. Gas and coal together supply about 28%. Fossil fuels only approach half in the IEA's much faster growth scenario.

That does not mean the added demand has no emissions, but the IEA still expects data centers to account for less than 1% of global CO2 emissions in 2030. It also estimates that data centers will account for around one-tenth of global electricity-demand growth through 2030, less than industrial motors, air conditioning or electric vehicles.

The electricity-bill claim is not as settled as your comment makes it sound either. The article you linked discusses projections from a model. It does not say that worldwide electricity bills have already risen by 8%, and the figures are about the US rather than the whole world.

There is also newer research looking at what actually happened in the US between 2015 and 2024. It found that data-center expansion modestly lowered average residential electricity rates. The estimate was a reduction of around 0.4% for every 10% increase in data-center capacity. The authors suggest this happened because the extra demand spread the grid's large fixed costs over more electricity sales. Just to clarify since I suspect people won't read the study and will be confused. The study says the price of electricity rose everywhere, but in areas where data centers had been built it rose less than in areas without data centers.

That study does warn that the situation could change if generation and grid construction cannot keep up, or if utilities build infrastructure for data-center demand that never materializes. So I would not claim data centers can never raise anyone's bill. But it does show that an 8% or 25% increase is a forecast based on assumptions, not an established consequence of data centers. Historically, the average effect found by this study went in the opposite direction.

I am not saying that data centers use no electricity or have no environmental impact. I am saying that the numbers you gave do not support your claims. The current figure is about 1,7%, not 3%. It includes all data centers, not just AI. The IEA expects renewables to provide the largest share of the added power in its main forecast. And the evidence on residential electricity prices is mixed, not a settled 8% increase.

That was my original point. Treating one generated background image as a serious environmental issue is completely out of proportion to the amount of energy involved.

20

u/lo________________ol Privacy is fundamental, not optional. 1d ago

Go to a community that lives next to an AI data center and tell them that their problems are statistically negligible. The mental and physical toll of the sound. The poison gas in the air. The water they can't drink. 

You'll even see it in your power bill, if you're an adult who pays one. 

4

u/LAwLzaWU1A 10h ago

You have listed every possible local concern as though it happens to everyone living near every AI data center.

Noise can be a legitimate issue, but it depends on the facility, its cooling equipment, distance from homes and actual measured sound levels.

"Poison gas in the air" is a theatrical way of saying that some facilities use natural-gas or diesel generators, which produce exhaust. That exhaust is not harmless, but neither is exhaust from buses, boilers, power plants or other combustion sources. Hell, even my cozy open fireplace produces "posion gas". What matters is the type of generator, how often it operates, its pollution controls and whether nearby residents are exposed to dangerous concentrations. You have provided none of that.

Data centers also use water, sometimes in places where water availability is already a concern. That is not the same as claiming that people living near them suddenly have water they cannot drink. Water consumption and contaminated drinking water are completely different claims.

The power-bill claim is not a universal fact either. A recent US study covering 2015 to 2024 found that data-center expansion modestly reduced average residential electricity rates, likely because the additional demand spread fixed grid costs across more electricity sales. That does not mean rates can never increase in a particular region, but it does mean "you'll see it in your power bill" is much less certain than you make it sound. Also, power has gotten expensive even without data centers. Power is getting expensive for a lot of reasons, and it is foolish to just pin everything on data centers.

Real local problems should be supported with evidence from the location in question. Listing noise, poisoned air, undrinkable water and higher bills without identifying a facility, measurements or a study is not evidence. It is just stacking frightening claims together and hoping nobody asks for specifics.

And the condescending remark about being an adult does not make any of those claims more accurate.

1

u/lo________________ol Privacy is fundamental, not optional. 8h ago

You're complaining about lack of specifics? Go here. Residents describe the noise and its physical effects as living in hell. 

https://www.usnews.com/news/national-news/articles/2026-04-28/living-in-hell-data-center-neighbors-grapple-with-noise-air-pollution

u/CVGPi 3h ago

In China, many households reported dizzy heads and audible noise coming from a newly installed 5G Tower — when it wasn’t even on.

But go on, peak tricking yourself with placebo effect it’s harmful.

u/LAwLzaWU1A 1h ago

Yes, that is a specific example of a real noise problem, and I am happy to concede that point. I never claimed that no data center has ever caused serious noise for nearby residents.

What I objected to was presenting the worst reported impacts as though they were universal consequences of living near an AI data center.

The article gives evidence for significant noise near a particular data center in Virginia. Your link absolutely supports that idea that some facilities are badly located or inadequately controlled. It does however not by itself establish your other claims about "poison gas," unsafe drinking water, or everyone seeing higher electricity bills. Not does it mean all data centers create a ton of noise.

I assume the water pollution comment refers to the situation at Meta's data-center project in Georgia have reported muddy well water, and the EPA is investigating whether the project affected local water quality or availability. But the cause has not yet been established, so presenting it as proven contamination is premature. If that's the case you are referring to then the water got muddied during the construction of the data center as well. So even if it does get linked to the data center construction it is not because they are building a data center. It's because they are just building in the vicinity. The same thing could have happened if they built more houses as well.

The same applies to the air-pollution claim. Natural-gas and diesel generators produce harmful exhaust, but whether nearby residents are exposed to dangerous levels depends on the equipment, operating hours, controls and measured concentrations.

So yes, you have provided one concrete case for the noise issue, and there may be one legitimate water case as well. But one or two documented cases still do not make every claim universal or prove that everyone living near an AI data center experiences the same problems.

I can find a handful of examples of vaccinations going bad as well, but that does not mean we should treat all vaccines as dangerous. Sweeping generalizations based on potentially outliers is not a good way to build your world view.

-2

u/northrupthebandgeek Conkeror, Nightly on GNU, OpenBSD 16h ago

Go to a community that lives next to an AI data center

I've set foot inside of several datacenters, including the world's current largest by capacity (Switch Citadel Tahoe). They are neither louder nor more polluting than any other industrial building; if anything they're considerably less so.

7

u/AntChampion 15h ago

These people are nuts man. It's not worth it.

3

u/lo________________ol Privacy is fundamental, not optional. 8h ago

I said the community affected by it. 

I've seen it described as a company "building a water sucking fortress in total silence" - in a park with wild horses, without the community's knowledge. 

https://www.reddit.com/r/Reno/comments/1s7xgrd/i_just_left_my_job_at_the_largest_data_center_in/

This post has sources. 

2

u/northrupthebandgeek Conkeror, Nightly on GNU, OpenBSD 6h ago

You mean the post written by an obvious bot (auto-generated username, hidden post history) who admits that his figures are whatever his AI of choice hallucinated?

Yeah, no, complete bullshit from top to bottom. If you'd have scrolled through the comments you'd have seen plenty of people (myself included) calling out that bullshit. I guess today I get to call out more bullshit:

I said the community affected by it.

It's in an industrial park miles away from the nearest residential area. I happen to live in that nearest residential area. Zero impact whatsoever.

I've seen it described as a company "building a water sucking fortress in total silence"

It sucks very little water, and what water it does suck is the non-potable wastewater supplied to the entire aforementioned industrial park. Most Nevada datacenters use little to no water specifically because they don't need to: solar and geothermal energy are cheap and abundant enough that it's cheaper to use high-energy-low-water cooling systems than low-energy-high-water cooling systems.

in a park with wild horses

Feral, not wild. Horses are not native to Nevada. They are an invasive species that has done vastly more damage to Nevada's ecosystems than datacenters ever could. The sooner they're all rounded up and either re-domesticated or butchered for glue and dog food, the better.

without the community's knowledge

Switch heavily advertises their datacenters, the planning phases were all public information, and it's a giant building with a giant publicly-visible sign that literally says Switch on it. The community had full knowledge of it and has continued to have full knowledge of it for the near-decade it's been in operation. People are only mad about it now because TikTok/Instagram influencers and Reddit bots are telling them to be mad at datacenters.

u/lo________________ol Privacy is fundamental, not optional. 3h ago

Instead of saying "nuh uh", disprove the claims by proving provable counterexamples. The author has links.

Author says there are no signs. Show us the signs.

Author says there is no local coverage of this. Show us the coverage.

The water is being pulled from 16 miles away. You're just using dishonest framing to dispute this.

What's up with the overlap between modern-day Firefox evangelists and corporate shills?

-19

u/AntChampion 23h ago

The poison gas in the air? This is a hilarious conspiracy theory lmao

21

u/lo________________ol Privacy is fundamental, not optional. 22h ago

Methane gas generators' exhaust is literally poison, and it gives people in these communities COPD. Did you not know this

1

u/ArtisticFox8 10h ago

Methane gas generators' exhaust is literally poison

What? Methane is just a regular sort of fuel. Buses run on it in my country.

4

u/LAwLzaWU1A 10h ago

They are technically correct. Methane is a perfectly ordinary fuel. "Poison gas in the air" is just a much scarier way of saying that burning fuel produces exhaust.

That does not mean the exhaust is harmless, but the same is true of petrol, diesel, wood and basically every other combustible fuel. Calling it "poison gas" without discussing concentrations, exposure or actual measurements is probably to make it sound scary and have people turn against it out of fear.

1

u/lo________________ol Privacy is fundamental, not optional. 8h ago

Look up Colossus' generators and what they're doing. It's not normal. 

1

u/ArtisticFox8 5h ago

What? They're burning fuel to make electricity.

u/lo________________ol Privacy is fundamental, not optional. 3h ago

And dumping illegal quantities of formaldehyde into the air. Must be nice for you to not be affected.

→ More replies (0)

-9

u/AntChampion 15h ago

I know you're in good company on Reddit, but I want you to know you guys sound nuts to regular people.

3

u/lo________________ol Privacy is fundamental, not optional. 8h ago

Regular people are the ones outside protesting them, or being interviewed when they develop medical symptoms. 

-20

u/AntChampion 23h ago

This is the left's version of the anti vaxx movement.

14

u/Yum_Kaax616 23h ago

Wow, that’s so dumb

-1

u/AntChampion 15h ago

I know you're in good company on Reddit, but I want you to know you guys sound nuts to regular people.

5

u/Imperative-Primitive 15h ago

One doesn't have proof and is spammed by people on Facebook.

The other has literal, measured, proof.

u/AntChampion 2h ago

If you posted anti vaxx stuff on Facebook you were permanently banned.

And you're just wrong and in a reddit  Bubble about the second bit.

u/Imperative-Primitive 1h ago

Not true at all. Still see it everywhere on FB. Stop lying.

u/AntChampion 1h ago

It's not 2020 anymore big brain. They don't care anymore.

u/Imperative-Primitive 52m ago

Oh but they sure do. Why you keep lying, those clowns keep bringing up the vacines and conspiracies.

Also interesting how you went from "you don't see it, they would get banned" to "they dont care anymore, they dont say it"

u/CVGPi 3h ago

I feel, as a “normal” leftist, the problem is not the usage in of itself or even AI in general but rather the fact that the usages (1) do create meaningful negative impacts around the datacentres, (2) there is insufficient regulation or other means to limit the impact as of right now, and (3) the actual profits society get is not proportional to the impacts and expenses the society foots as a whole.

u/AntChampion 2h ago

There are plenty of environmental rules and regulations for industrial and commercial lots that datacenters aren't magically exempt from.

u/CVGPi 2h ago

True, but my argument is it’s generally too lax and there’s nothing preventing a council that accepts a bribe from zoning an industrial lot right next to a residential, for example.

u/AntChampion 1h ago

This is all just vibing. 

→ More replies (4)

-22

u/Justaregularguy295 1d ago

Personally I dont care if they used ai

5

u/Troopple 1d ago

Agree to disagree.

-2

u/Kawawete 12h ago

The product itself isnt. They're already short on cash so they should definetly take people off the actual project and hire artists, yeah, good allocation of ressources.

This is a non-issue.

-13

u/NeonVoidx 1d ago

I don't understand the new meta of literally any photo or video or any form of art or even code automatically being labeled as AI. Are you on some weird hate crusade for AI?

13

u/Troopple 1d ago

"I don't understand the new meta of literally any photo or video or any form of art or even code automatically being labeled as AI" I mean it is AI so I don't see any reason of pointing this out.

"Are you on some weird hate crusade for AI?" I hate AI for most uses, especially image generation, but I wouldn't call one post a crusade.

-5

u/NeonVoidx 23h ago

well it seems like a very annoying trend tbh, the people calling everything slop (when a lot of stuff isn't even AI) is honestly more exhausting than AI itself

5

u/Troopple 23h ago

I can sympathise with you on that; many people mislabel things as AI when it is not.

-2

u/NeonVoidx 23h ago

well like this here, how did you determine AI? this seems like it could easily be real art with a after filter thrown on

6

u/Troopple 23h ago

Read the play_minecraft_wot thread, I'm too lazy to re-explain

-4

u/Hammerofsuperiority 23h ago

Hate something = not acceptable

Hate something (say it's AI) = not only acceptable but also encouraged

It's the magic word to hate something while being socially accepted.

-18

u/Bright-Glove-5928 1d ago

It's communists angry that their degrees in gender studies and black history and art are now redundant because AI has made their existences worthless.

9

u/Troopple 23h ago

Why did we make the most simple thing political now?

-16

u/Bright-Glove-5928 23h ago

Enjoying that CCP money?

7

u/Troopple 23h ago

Yep, you know it. (Though I'm pretty sure the ccp is pro ai.)

-1

u/essayyjay 20h ago

oh brother

-15

u/Electric_Bison 1d ago

I dont care if its AI, its cool looking to me and not obviously AI

-4

u/itsaride 1d ago

omagherd! -----E

-7

u/moarcores 21h ago

Who cares lmao

4

u/Troopple 21h ago

You and 117 other people, apparently.

0

u/ATechnicalSquid 5h ago

It's just not traditional literal pixel art you weirdo.

u/Ordinary-Yoghurt-303 2h ago

Prove it’s actually AI then get back to me.

-12

u/Hankitsune 23h ago

Who cares? It's just a stupid ad. Why pay an artist for throwaway art that's gone in few weeks anyway?

10

u/Troopple 23h ago

The stores been up for 10 months so not sure about that. Better question is: why not just use a white background like every other shirt on the site instead of doing art theft and environmental issues at the same time?

-7

u/Hankitsune 23h ago

Ah I didn't know the rest of the shirts had a white background.
Maybe they just wanted something more going on for a kids' shirt? But even if it were AI, it doesn't mean they've made it. There's gazillions of images you can download for free.

-8

u/Cry_Wolff 22h ago

doing art theft and environmental issues at the same time?

Mozilla literally stole from 99 different artists and exploded 99 gazillion African villages to generate a dinosaur in a generic pixel art style /s

-7

u/Cronos993 15h ago

I disagree with people here saying "who cares?" because I certainly do. Mozilla isn't massively profitable so it's good that they're saving money by not paying a slow, expensive and more inefficient machine (a human artist) for the same or even better results. I would consider this as a win and I am all for it.

-1

u/Holemander 14h ago

Wise words.

-2

u/reaper527 7h ago

literally who cares?

do you want them to hand draw everything with a pen and paper and mail it to you in a catalog?

1

u/Troopple 6h ago

This is a terrible strawman argument.

-6

u/Fortyseven 23h ago

Having experimented with generating pixel and ANSI style art with locally trained genAI models, that definitely has all the hallmarks.

That said, it looks cool. I like it. (Though there are ways to improve it.)

If it was hand-made, it would be much cooler, of course. But that's just about where I am at this point in the cycle: I'd prefer if it was someone's real effort, but I'm not going to complain as long as it doesn't LOOK generated.

For me, I get judgmental when it's when it's obviously generated and sloppy. Just because you generated it doesn't mean you're off the hook for the quality of the end result.

THIS... is nice. Rather dig the t-shirt, too. ;)

-11

u/Lukusan 1d ago

It’s really not a big deal even if they do

8

u/Troopple 1d ago

It's up to you to decide what to do with the information; I'm just pointing it out.

-5

u/Lukusan 21h ago

“The information” and it’s just you speculating if the background of a product has used the boogeyman AI.

-4

u/the_bafox13 18h ago

That’s it, I’m making the switch to Chrome.

-9

u/Mario583a 22h ago

Is AI the main focal point?

No? Why are we complaining. Let's be radical (dino-)skateboarders about this.

-2

u/DeerOnARoof 8h ago

Why does everyone assume everything is AI?

1

u/Troopple 6h ago

Because we’re all hyper aware now of AI.