Should you boycott AI?
The 5 risks cited, and what can be measured

Since late 2025, several calls have urged people to boycott or refuse AI: an op-ed with 150 signatories in the French daily Le Monde; a manifesto by teachers and researchers, which has gathered more than 3,400 signatures; and a campaign to cancel ChatGPT subscriptions. These calls to boycott generative AI cite 5 risk categories: cultural, informational, societal, environmental and civilisational, of which only one can be measured in CO2e.

On the climate, a year of regular AI use comes to about 2.8 kgCO2e (kilograms of CO2 equivalent): a little more than half of a beef meal, according to our calculation. Giving up AI therefore does very little to reduce a person's carbon footprint; on a global scale, what matters is the growth in data centres. The other 4 risks cannot be counted in CO2e, but the calls cite them just as much.

1Calls to boycott AI: an op-ed, a manifesto and a cancellation campaign

An op-ed with 150 signatories, in June 2026

On 18 June 2026, Le Monde published an op-ed signed by 150 people, according to AFP (Agence France-Presse), including the writers Annie Ernaux and Hervé Le Tellier, the comic-book author Enki Bilal, the former French culture minister Françoise Nyssen and the biologist Marc-André Selosse.

The op-ed was initiated by Alexandre Basquin, senator for the Nord département, according to his own website, where he publishes the text. In our translation, it asks everyone who is not obliged to use generative AI to boycott it. The text also asks legislators to ration the energy resources allocated to generative AI.

A manifesto by teachers and researchers, late 2025

In late 2025, the Toulouse political ecology workshop (Atelier d'écologie politique de Toulouse, Atécopol) published a manifesto titled Face à l'IA générative, l'objection de conscience (Faced with generative AI, conscientious objection, in our translation). Its signatories, mostly from higher education, research and the French national education system, commit not to use these tools in their teaching, research or administrative work, unless expressly obliged to do so. According to La Relève et la Peste, a French news site, the manifesto had more than 1,300 signatories in early December 2025; according to the French news site Mediapart, it had more than 3,400 signatures in early July 2026. The text speaks of conscientious objection; the word "boycott" comes from press coverage.

A cancellation campaign and a video game awards decision

In the United States, the QuitGPT campaign, organised in late January 2026, calls on people to cancel their ChatGPT subscriptions. Its organisers first criticise OpenAI for a donation by its president, Greg Brockman, to the political committee MAGA Inc., according to MIT Technology Review. They then criticise it for the agreement announced on 28 February 2026 with the US defence department, which they say could lead to mass surveillance and autonomous weapons; OpenAI states that the agreement rules out these 2 uses.

According to Euronews, the campaign claimed more than 1.5 million participants on 2 March 2026. The figure adds together cancellations, social media shares and sign-ups on its website.

Refusal also takes the form of rules. On 20 December 2025, the Indie Game Awards withdrew 2 awards from the French game Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, because the awards' rules exclude games developed with generative AI. According to Next, a French technology news site, the studio explained that the issue concerned placeholder textures, which were removed and replaced by the final textures.

2The 5 risks the calls cite, from copyright to loss of control

The calls do not all say the same thing. We sort their reasons into 5 risk categories, which the op-ed brings together in a single text. For each category, we give what the op-ed says (quoted from the text published by its initiator, in our translation), a fact, and what can and cannot be measured. The order is that of our framework and says nothing about how serious each risk is.

Cultural: creation and copyright

The op-ed says that generative AI thrives on the mass theft of data, articles and works. On 20 July 2026, a federal court in California approved the settlement ending the lawsuit brought by authors against Anthropic over the unauthorised use of their works to train its models, according to the Authors Guild, an organisation of authors. The settlement amounts to $1.5 billion for 482,460 works, or about $3,000 per work, according to the order.

Informational: errors, fakes and trust

The op-ed denounces a mush of synthetic images and deepfakes. In June 2023, a New York court sanctioned lawyers who had cited 6 court decisions that ChatGPT had invented, and Damien Charlotin's database listed, as of 3 October 2026, 2,125 decisions in which a court noted content invented by an AI. As for fakes, CNN reports that in January 2024 an employee of the engineering group Arup in Hong Kong transferred the equivalent of $25.6 million after a faked video conference.

Societal: employment and learning

The op-ed predicts millions of jobs destroyed and, among young people, weakened cognitive abilities. In US payroll records, employment among workers aged 22 to 25 in the occupations most exposed to AI is 19% lower than it would have been had it tracked employment in other occupations, according to a Stanford study (August 2026); its authors do not establish the cause.

On learning, an MIT study of 54 participants, which has not yet been peer-reviewed, observes lower brain connectivity among those who write with an assistant; the study team asks people not to read this as meaning that AI damages the brain. See AI and jobs and AI and the brain.

Environmental: energy, water, metals

The op-ed writes that the frenzy around generative AI marks a clear renunciation of the great battle of our century, ecology. It is the only one of the 5 risks that is counted in kilowatt-hours and CO2e. See all the environmental impacts of AI and the water AI consumes.

Civilisational: loss of control

On 30 May 2023, a 22-word statement from the Center for AI Safety put the risk of extinction from AI alongside pandemics and nuclear war. The statement had more than 350 signatories, according to the New York Times, including the heads of OpenAI, Google DeepMind and Anthropic. In April 2025, Geoffrey Hinton, winner of the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physics, put the risk that AI would end up taking control from humans at between 10 and 20%, according to CBS News.

The risk of loss of control is disputed. In October 2024, Yann LeCun, Turing Award winner, then a researcher at Meta and a professor at New York University, called these fears absurd ("complete B.S.", in his words), according to TechCrunch. As early as March 2023, in response to a letter calling for a pause, the DAIR research institute, founded by Timnit Gebru, wrote that these hypothetical risks distract from the real harms of systems already deployed.

We found no mention of a risk of extinction in the text of the op-ed. It condemns a vision of society founded on the marginalisation of human beings and the destruction of our living environment.

3The environmental risk in orders of magnitude: one user, then the system

A year of regular use: a little more than half of a beef meal

For 10 questions per day, plus 5 images and 1 video of 5 seconds per week, the year comes to 2.8 kgCO2e with the global average electricity mix: 57% of the emissions of a beef meal, or those of 20 km by car, according to our calculation based on reference values from ADEME (the French Agency for Ecological Transition). It would take 725 years of this use to equal a Paris-New York return flight; see what a flight represents in a carbon budget (in French). For one person, giving up AI makes very little difference to their carbon footprint.

This calculation counts only the electricity used by servers. Using the life cycle assessment figure that Mistral AI has published for one response (1.14 gCO2e, including server manufacturing), the emissions from the questions are nearly 9 times higher and the year rises to 6.5 kgCO2e, or 1.3 beef meals: the same order of magnitude. See why AI is bad for the environment, from the chip to the response, and how much energy a question put to ChatGPT uses.

Video changes the calculation

Of this total, the 52 videos account for 2.0 kgCO2e, the 3,650 questions for 0.5 and the 260 images for 0.3. With 1 video per day, the year rises to 15 kgCO2e, or 3 beef meals, of which the videos account for 14. The generator used as the reference in this series of articles is one of the most energy-hungry of those measured; with a median generator, the year of regular use falls to 1.4 kgCO2e. See the footprint of an AI-generated video and that of an image.

At system level, consumption that could almost double by 2030

The environmental argument made in the calls is aimed at the system. The world's data centres consumed 485 TWh of electricity in 2025 (terawatt-hours, that is billions of kWh), and the International Energy Agency (IEA) expects 945 TWh in 2030. At this scale, what matters is the number of centres built, the electricity that powers them and the uses built in by default, far more than any individual user's choice. See how much electricity AI uses.

4Can a boycott of AI make a difference when AI is widely used and built in by default?

Nearly half of people in France already use generative AI

According to the Baromètre du numérique (the French digital barometer), 48% of French people aged 12 and over used generative AI in 2025, compared with 20% in 2023, and the share reached 85% among 18 to 24 year-olds. In the same survey, 46% consider that it has a greater environmental impact than a conventional search.

An OpinionWay poll commissioned and presented in May 2026 by CeSIA (Centre pour la sécurité de l'IA, a French organisation), and cited by the op-ed, found that 8% of French people want to speed up the development of AI in France and Europe, while 42% want to slow it down sharply or pause it temporarily.

AI built into search engines, messaging apps and software

You can do without an assistant; AI built in by default is harder to avoid. Google launched its AI Overviews in France on 22 July 2026: AI-generated answers appear in the results, and we found no setting to turn them off in its blog post.

Meta has been rolling out its assistant on WhatsApp in 41 European countries since March 2025; the Italian competition authority opened an investigation in July 2025 for suspected abuse of a dominant position, noting that the assistant had been pre-installed without users having asked for it. It closed its proceedings in May 2026 without ruling: the European Commission had extended to Italy its own investigation into a Meta rule closing WhatsApp to competing assistants. On 9 June 2026, the Commission ordered Meta to reopen that access provisionally, pending its final decision.

Microsoft included its Copilot assistant in its consumer subscriptions in January 2025, with a price increase of €30 a year in France, according to Next. According to Microsoft, a setting lets you turn it off, and existing subscribers could switch to a plan without Copilot.

What a boycott can achieve, and what it does not reach

An individual boycott sends a signal, especially when it targets a paid subscription: that is QuitGPT's bet. It does not reach AI installed by default or corporate uses. Clubic, a French technology site, notes that the general public is only one part of the market (our translation). On the climate, its direct effect is small; on the other 4 risks, it expresses a refusal that emissions figures do not measure. None of this makes a boycott useless: its effect is felt elsewhere than in a person's carbon footprint.

5Between a boycott and unlimited use: individual, professional and collective action

Between using nothing and using everything, there are 3 levels of action: individual choice, refusal within a profession and collective rules.

Individual choice: boycott AI, or use it selectively

At this level, you can either boycott AI or use it selectively. In our ranking of 10 ways to reduce the impact of AI, the top 3 actions are doing without generated video, asking yourself whether AI is needed and keeping reasoning mode (where the model works through steps before answering) for difficult questions. The choice of service also matters: see which eco-friendly AI chatbot to choose.

Refusal within one's profession

The Atécopol manifesto is a professional refusal: its signatories commit to it in their teaching and research, and say so publicly. The Indie Game Awards wrote it into the rules of their awards. In France, the publisher Éditions Double Ponctuation announced in November 2024 that it was putting on its books a logo reading, in our translation, guaranteed free of artificial intelligence, according to ActuaLitté, a French publishing news site. These refusals create a norm visible to the public in settings where no employer or client imposes the tool.

Collective rules

In 2023, after 148 days on strike, American screenwriters secured an agreement under which a studio cannot impose AI software on them and must tell them about any AI-generated material, according to the summary of the agreement; the next contract, in force until 1 May 2030, keeps these protections according to the Writers Guild of America. In Europe, the Irish data protection authority obtained from Meta in May 2025 a simplified objection form, ahead of the training of Meta's models on users' public posts.

In France, ADEME has asked since July 2026 for users to be able to switch off, if they wish (our translation), the generative AI functions added to existing services. For a company, the rule starts with a usage policy and a measurement: our AI footprint calculator gives an order of magnitude, and our guides explain how to count AI in your Bilan Carbone® (the French carbon accounting method) and measure the AI footprint of a company.

6Key takeaways

• Calls to boycott or refuse AI cite 5 risks: cultural, informational, societal, environmental and civilisational.
• A year of regular use comes to about 2.8 kgCO2e, a little more than half of a beef meal; video accounts for most of it.
• The other 4 risks cannot be measured in CO2e: they concern copyright, information, jobs and loss of control.
• Nearly half of French people already use generative AI, and it is arriving by default in search engines and messaging apps.

Further reading: digital pollution statistics.

Further resources

Frequently asked questions

1Why are people calling for a boycott of AI?

The op-ed published in the French daily Le Monde on 18 June 2026, signed by 150 people according to AFP, gives reasons that we group into 5 categories (in our translation of the text published by its initiator): the mass theft of data, articles and works; synthetic images and deepfakes; jobs and the abilities of young people; energy and water consumption; and a vision of society that it judges to be founded on the marginalisation of human beings. It calls on everyone who is not obliged to use generative AI to boycott it.

2Does quitting ChatGPT reduce your carbon footprint?

Very little: a year of regular use (10 questions per day, plus 5 images and 1 video of 5 seconds per week) comes to about 2.8 kgCO2e with the global average electricity mix, according to our calculation. That is 57% of the emissions of a beef meal, or those of 20 km by car. If the questions are counted on a life cycle assessment basis, the year rises to 6.5 kgCO2e. Generated video accounts for most of the total.

3What are the dangers of AI?

Calls for a boycott cite 5 categories of danger: cultural (copyright), informational (errors and fakes), societal (jobs, learning), environmental (energy, water, metals) and civilisational (loss of control). Only the environmental risk is counted in kWh and CO2e. The risk of loss of control is disputed: some researchers consider it serious, others unfounded.

4Is it still possible to avoid AI?

You can do without an assistant, but AI built in by default is harder to avoid. Google's AI Overviews arrived in France on 22 July 2026, Meta's assistant has been present in WhatsApp since 2025, and Microsoft has included Copilot in its consumer subscriptions, with a setting to turn it off. ADEME has asked for users to be able to switch these functions off.

5Is AI worse for the climate than eating meat or flying?

Not at the scale of one person: a year of regular use comes to about 2.8 kgCO2e according to our calculation, against about 5 kgCO2e for a single beef meal and 2,060 kgCO2e for a Paris-New York return flight, according to ADEME. On a global scale, data centres consumed 485 TWh of electricity in 2025, and the International Energy Agency expects 945 TWh in 2030.

6What is the QuitGPT movement?

QuitGPT is an American campaign organised in late January 2026 that calls on people to cancel their ChatGPT subscriptions. It gained momentum after the agreement announced on 28 February 2026 between OpenAI and the US defence department. It claimed more than 1.5 million participants on 2 March 2026, counting cancellations, social media shares and sign-ups, and its website cites 4 million people in October 2026. We have found no independent verification of these figures.

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