Supported by current research and investigative journalism, the art-based initiative “Save the AI” leans into satire and absurdity to visceralize AI’s impact in everyday terms, bridging psychological distance (Libermann et al. 2007) to garner attention and offer bite-sized information in more easily digestible formats. Physical posters, flyers, stickers, and social media posts question readers “Are You Thirsty? So Is Your AI” and call to “Close the Windows! AI is Suffocating!”, pointing out the environmental costs (Crawford 2024) systematically obfuscated by Big Tech developing the models and running the data centers needed for AI-based tools (Gabbott 2024). Launched in February 2025, this analog and online campaign has so far been supported by and appeared as print material in almost 30 locations across North and South America, Europe and Oceania.

The intentions of the campaign are three-fold: bringing environmental and social impacts to the forefront by traversing psychological distance, utilizing satire and humor, and developing a global network using grassroots approaches. By connecting people’s own basic needs for resources to the “needs” of rapidly growing AI infrastructure, the initiative aims to evoke an emotional response, bringing seemingly distant, ambiguous and uncertain consequences to the viewer’s here and now (Weber 2006; Chu / Yang 2020). This is achieved by centering satire, encouraging engagement and fostering collective action through humor, further increasing the relatability, shareability and likeability of the campaign on social media and through in-person word-of-mouth.

Offering content for a suite of dimensions, namely water (Li et al. 2023), air (Han et al. 2024), electricity (Halper / O’Donovan 2024), coal (Halper 2024), and jobs (Gmyrek et al. 2023) respectively, the conceptualized and distributed artifacts are designed featuring intentionally absurd text and are placed in everyday physical spaces, allowing people to interact with them while going about their day (e.g., water posters placed around drinking fountains, electricity posters located next to power plugs, air posters stuck against glass doors).

As a main anchor of the campaign, the posters are translated into 9 languages (Arabic, English, Farsi, French, German, Mandarin, Brazilian Portuguese, Spanish and Turkish) for existing collaborators and a blank template is made available to encourage the contribution of additional languages: Slovak has been such a community-contributed addition to the language roster. Alongside the posters, stickers and postcards distributed at events and among students intend to spark curiosity in physical spaces, leading people to the online portion of the initiative via QR code, where further information can be accessed through the project website (savethe.ai). This influx of users is intended to be bi-directional, wherein interested individuals decide to support the campaign by printing posters for their own surroundings or by providing a translation in a missing language.

Satirizing the environmental and social impact of data centers to raise awareness in a public, approachable manner, the initiative informs and prompts discussion through humor. As a successful example of an online networking campaign, it helps people from different parts of the world connect, collectively express their concerns, and work in solidarity. Calls for collective action and networking both online and offline have shown promising success, with engaged social media reception in various languages. These interactions have ranged from support for the initiative’s concerns, to surprise at the extent of resource use by AI, fulfilling the project’s goal of raising awareness through satire. The project website continues to curate research findings of AI’s resource consumption in regard to the chosen dimensions, and the initiative is developing new content that speaks to different aspects of people’s everyday lives.