Google execs celebrate after tech giant achieves company-first milestone using AI: 'Game-changer'

Google's sustainability reporting team is using artificial intelligence to streamline information aggregation and make reporting more efficient.

Trellis recently wrote about the company's 2024 sustainability report, which was the first one to be produced and published with AI. The team used Google's proprietary AI tools, Gemini and NotebookLM, though artificial intelligence competitors offer similar capabilities.

Luke Elder, the lead for sustainability reporting, told Trellis that the technology unlocked new efficiencies for the team, making it a total "game-changer."

The report compiles sources ranging from academic-style papers to voluntary claims, fact-checking and then combining them into an easy-to-read document. With hundreds of people contributing information to the report, using AI to sift through the text for reliable material was an enormous timesaver.

Similarly, using Gemini to translate technical documents into easier-to-read reports was massively helpful for Elder and his team.

"We will throw that into Gemini and ask it to summarize it for an annual voluntary environmental disclosure with the tone of Google's environmental reporting," Elder said. The team is able to customize the tone, grammar, punctuation, and more in order to create a consistent voice.

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The report was also published in two versions, one of which comes with an AI chatbot that users can query to search for specific questions. Trellis praised this version, noting that the bot didn't hesitate to highlight sustainability benchmarks where Google is falling short of goals.

The use of AI, specifically generative AI, has been controversial among environmental advocates because of the massive amount of resources, including energy and water, it demands. But several implementations of AI, such as this one, look to provide net sustainability benefits — benefiting both the humans involved and the environment alike.

Similarly, AI has been used to develop agricultural models, wildlife conservation monitoring programs, and more.

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