In addition to its artistic theme, Korsholm Music Festival has a yearly undertheme about a sustainability topic. With the help of the undertheme we want to take part in social dialogue as well as reflect on and further improve our actions.
The 2026 undertheme is AI & Sustainability.
AI’s Environmental Impact
The use of AI affects our environment with is energy and water consumption:
- One Google search (without AI) consumes 0,3 kilowatt-hours of energy, whereas a search with ChatGPT consumes 2,9 kilowatt-hours, which is almost 10 times more.
- A chain of circa 20-50 questions and responses with ChatGPT (GPT-3) consumes approximately half a liter of water.
- According to a late 2025 analysis every video produced with the Sora 2 AI model consumes 1 kilowatt-hour of energy, 4 liters of water and produces 466 grams of carbon dioxide emissions.
Source: Akepa. January 2026. Environmental impact of generative AI – 30+ stats & facts. Web page. Referenced 19.5.2026. https://thesustainableagency.com/blog/environmental-impact-of-generative-ai/
These sums can feel small, but as AI becomes a routine in the everyday lives of millions of people, the emissions start quickly piling up.
Avoiding AI Has Not Negatively Affected the Festival Production
This year the production of Korsholm Music Festival has set an aim to use AI as little as possible. In practice it looks, for example, like this:
- In Google searches the AI summary is filtered out
- The Music Festival’s communication and its translations are created with minimal help from AI
- The graphic and visual elements are self-created or commissioned from a graphic designer. The graphic look of the 2026 program is designed by Andrei Palomäki.
- When using stock photography, pictures created by AI are filtered out when there is an option to do so.
Results:
- The production of the Music Festival has proceeded in its usual schedule
- The most direct impact can be seen in translating texts, which is clearly slower without AI. However, the time spent in translating is a good investment, since the production team will need fluent Finnish, Swedish and English also in situations, where relying on AI is not possible. Translating without AI maintains language proficiency effectively.
- Searching and viewing information without Google’s AI summary is more critical, which is useful as misinformation becomes more and more common.
It Is Better To Do Something Than Nothing At All
The nature of the work done at Korsholm Music Festival allows avoiding AI. That is not a realistic option in everyone’s jobs, and it is not our intention to act as moralists.
Instead, we would like to take part in the discussion on this topic and ask, is AI truly, in all areas, as indispensable a tool as it is made out to be?
It is not always possible to avoid AI in the Music Festival’s production, either: in many digital tools AI has already been integrated as a fixed part of the platform without an option to filter it out.
As in all environmental work, however, imperfect action is better than perfect inaction. If you can only partly do something, it is still better than not doing it at all.
“Imperfect action is better than perfect inaction.”
– Harry S Truman
