Chapter 09 · Sustainability & AISustainability & AI
Generative AI
Definition
AI systems that create new content — text, images, audio, code or video — in response to prompts, rather than only classifying or predicting from existing data.
References
This source provides part of the technical or institutional basis for the definition.
This source supports the explanation of how the term is applied, measured or governed in practice.
Overview
What it means
Generative systems learn statistical patterns from large training corpora and sample from them to produce novel outputs. The category came to prominence with chatbots and image generators from 2022, and now spans scientific design tools and synthetic-data production.
How it is used
Uses in sustainability include drafting and analysing disclosures, generating design options for products and buildings, and creating training data where observations are scarce. The same systems can mass-produce plausible but false content, including misleading environmental claims.
Why it matters
Generative AI lowers the cost of both trustworthy and untrustworthy communication. NIST's Generative AI Profile catalogues the resulting risks — from confabulation to information integrity — that sustainability professionals relying on these tools must manage.