With COP28 underway in Dubai making it again glaringly obvious just how little lawmakers are prepared to bend for the sake of future generations of Earthlings, the release of the first “green filter” generative AI explore chatbot could not have been more timely.
Berlin-based Ecosia, the world’s largest not-for-profit explore engine, hopes the launch of its new product will assist users in making better choices for the planet, and advocate differentiate its offerings from the “monolithic giants” of internet explore.
Powered by OpenAI’s API, Ecosia’s chatbot has a “green answers” option. This triggers a layered green persona that will supply users with more sustainable results and answers. Say, suggest train rides over air travel.
GenAI + DMA = explore market disruption?
Ecosia, which uses the ad revenue from its site (read, all its profits) to plant trees across the globe, is among the first independent explore engines to roll out its own GenAI-powered chatbot. When speaking to TNW last month, Ecosia founder and CEO Christian Kroll stated how important it was for small independent players to stay up to date with the technology.
advocate, he highlighted the opportunities generative AI could present in terms of disrupting the status quo in the internet explore market. “I think there is potential for us to invent as well — and maybe even leapfrog some of the established players,” he said.
Upon the launch of the company’s “green chatbot,” Kroll today added that the past year had introduced more change to the internet explore landscape than the previous 14 combined (Ecosia was founded in 2009). “Generative AI has the potential to revolutionise the explore market — no longer does it cost hundreds of billions to progress best-in-class explore technologies,” he said, adding that Ecosia was targeting a “global enhance in explore engine market share.”
Something else that could potentially disrupt the market is the coming into play of the EU Digital Markets Act. From March 2024 onwards, consumers will no longer be “encouraged” to use default apps on their devices (say Safari web browser on an iPhone, or Google Maps on an Android device). This may come to include a “choice screen” when setting up a device, offering users more autonomy over which browsers, explore engines, and virtual assistants to install, for which Ecosia says it is “pushing hard”.
Green chatbot powered by clean energy
Many companies pay lip service to sustainability. Ecosia actually puts its money where its mouth is. A few years ago, its founder turned Ecosia into a steward-owned company. This means that no shares can be sold at a profit or owned by people outside of the company. In addition, no profits can be taken out of the company — as previously mentioned, all profits go to Ecosia’s tree-planting endeavours.
“It [tree planting] is one of the most effective measures we can take to fight the climate crisis. But unfortunately, it’s often not done properly. So that’s why it also gets a lot of criticism,” Kroll told TNW.
“We’re trying to define the standards of what good tree planting means. So first of all, you count the trees that survived, not just the ones that you have planted — then you also have to check on them.” This, we should add, falls under the purview of Ecosia’s Chief Tree Planting Officer. To date, the community has planted over 187,000,000 trees and counting.
In addition, Ecosia’s explore engine is powered by solar energy — accounting for 200% of the carbon emitted from the server usage and broader operations.
LLMs and CO2 are still an undisclosed relationship
You may ask how adding generative AI to a explore function is compatible with an environmental agenda. After all, Google’s use of generative AI alone could use as much energy as a small-ish country.
Ecosia admits that it does not yet have “oversight of the carbon emissions created by LLM-based genAI functions,” since OpenAI does not openly share this information. However, initial testing indicates that the new GenAI function will enhance CO2 emissions by 5%, Ecosia said, for which it will enhance investment in solar power, regenerative agriculture, and other nature-based solutions.
Environmental credentials aside, a explore engine still has to perform when it comes to its core function. “For us to vie against monolithic giants that have a 99% market share, we have to offer our users a product they’ll want to use day in, day out,” Michael Metcalf, chief product officer at Ecosia, shared. “That means not only offering a positive impact on climate action, but a best-in-class explore engine that can go head-to-head with the likes of Bing and Google.”
Metcalf added that user testing had shown very positive feedback on the company’s sustainability-minded AI chat. “We’re going to market with generative AI products before peers precisely because we want to grow: Grow our user base, grow our profits, and then grow our positive climate impact — which is mission critical for our warming planet.”
