AI can be a powerful tool to accelerate climate action, when developed and used in a responsible way. At Zendesk, we want to ensure our AI products, features, and capabilities support our carbon neutral product commitment.

By implementing a sustainable AI strategy, which entails working with cloud providers for clearer insight into AI’s impact, adopting green engineering practices, and incorporating sustainability considerations into our AI-related Business Code of Conduct, we are committed to minimizing the carbon footprint of our AI products and features.

One major and immediate opportunity in driving environmentally responsible AI is ensuring there’s transparency with respect to the data about its impact. That’s why we conducted an in-depth analysis on the carbon impact of our own AI solutions this year. This measures both the carbon emissions generated during building and using Zendesk AI, and the emissions saved by automating and streamlining CX activities.

We estimate that the suggested macros feature of Zendesk AI saved nearly 20 million minutes of agents’ time for our customers since it was launched in October 2021. It helped reduce over 600 tCO2e carbon emissions — almost five times its own original carbon footprint.

At this inflection point of the AI revolution, we know Zendesk has a role to play to ensure that the technology can contribute to a low carbon, sustainable future. We hope more companies will join us in this journey. That’s why we published this guide that details key ways for companies to take action. We know this is only the beginning, and as we continue to measure and reduce the environmental impact of our AI products, we will share more learnings with our communities and customers.