COP31 initiative calls on AI firms to cite climate sources and disclose energy use

An initiative co-led by Brazil, the United Nations and UNESCO released recommendations for AI companies at the COP31 climate conference in Antalya, Türkiye, on November 13. It asks providers to show users the sources and uncertainty behind answers on climate science and to disclose energy use and other environmental impacts from running their systems. The document sets out recommended actions for companies, governments and researchers.

For someone asking a chatbot about climate change, a link to a scientific source would make it possible to compare a claim with the research behind it. A user could see, for example, whether a finding applies to the region or period the answer describes. The initiative also wants providers to evaluate how their products affect the quality of climate information before release and after major updates, and to publish the results.

An earlier report by the UN's Independent International Scientific Panel on AI explained why confident prose is a poor guide to accuracy. The same fluency that makes a complex subject easier to read can make an unsupported answer appear reliable. The recommendations call for companies to report how reliability varies across languages, giving people a way to judge whether tests reflect the language in which they actually use a service.

Official warnings in a disaster

The document treats urgent public warnings as a distinct case. It asks providers to surface trustworthy alerts, identify synthetic images and audio, and work with weather and disaster authorities. A label helps establish how a piece of media was made. The World Meteorological Organization’s standard format for alerts can carry the areas at risk, the expected time frame and protective actions. A link to the original warning gives readers access to those details.

The recommendations also address public agencies that use AI for climate services, early warnings or outreach. They ask governments to tell the public when AI is involved and keep people responsible for oversight. Researchers and civil society are encouraged to build open tests of how well AI answers climate questions in different languages.

What counts as an environmental disclosure

The initiative wants AI companies to publish measurements of energy use, emissions, water and land use in a form that outsiders can check. A common method would give people living near a proposed facility, as well as researchers and reporters, a basis for comparing claims. UNESCO’s existing environmental guidance identifies both training and everyday use as sources of resource demand. A disclosure can show whether it covers both stages, something a single efficiency claim leaves unclear.

Claims that AI helps the climate would face a separate test under the recommendations. The initiative asks companies to tie those claims to systems they have actually deployed and make the evidence available for independent checks. An estimate of the emissions a system might save in managing a building measures something different from the emissions involved in running the AI. The document says claimed benefits should not be deducted from reported emissions.

The recommendations build on the declaration on climate information launched in Belém last year. That declaration calls for public access to reliable climate data and urges governments to ask technology companies to study how their platforms affect the information people encounter. This week’s recommendations ask governments to include safeguards for climate information in both sets of national plans, on AI and on climate.

The UN said Germany pledged €2 million to the Global Fund for Information Integrity on Climate Change, which UNESCO administers. The fund backs research, communications work and public awareness projects. The release gave no implementation dates for changes to individual chatbot services.

UNESCO plans to release a separate study on how chatbots answer climate questions on November 16. The official programme lists a 4 p.m. local press briefing and a 7 p.m. launch at the German pavilion in Antalya.