AI could add to fossil fuel emissions in a less obvious way than power-hungry data centers: by making oil and gas production cheaper and more productive. New research suggests those gains could outweigh some of AI’s benefits for cleaner energy.

The peer-reviewed research in npj Climate Action modeled AI-driven productivity gains across fossil fuels and renewable energy. Across 64 scenarios, researchers estimated a net annual increase of 0.47 billion to 1.8 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide when AI improved both sectors. The results represent modeled economic effects, not measured emissions or forecasts for individual companies or countries.

The study examines what its authors call “enabled emissions”: additional emissions that can result when AI lowers costs or raises productivity in fossil fuel extraction, processing, and energy production. APAC energy companies are already expanding AI across upstream operations.

Malaysia’s PETRONAS Carigali said July 8 that it was expanding its TriCipta AI initiative with IBM and Tridiagonal.AI. The work targets surface-equipment optimization and production and maintenance decisions, while earlier tools have supported geoscience and exploration analysis.

AI efficiency could drive more fossil fuel production

Lower operating costs do not automatically mean lower emissions. AI that reduces exploration costs, improves recovery rates, or makes existing assets cheaper to operate could make additional fossil fuel production economically viable.

Australia’s Woodside provides another example of upstream AI adoption. Its Maint Intel system analyzes maintenance records and equipment performance to recommend maintenance intervals at the North West Shelf project. Woodside said testing on the offshore Angel platform cut model-processing time from five days to under two hours.

Neither deployment shows that AI has increased emissions at PETRONAS or Woodside. Both demonstrate the kinds of operational productivity gains examined by the global research. AI can also support methane detection, equipment reliability, and other emissions-reduction efforts.

AI’s electricity use creates a separate emissions footprint. The International Energy Agency expects global data-center electricity consumption to roughly double from 485 TWh in 2025 to 950 TWh in 2030. TechRepublic has separately covered grid pressure in Australia and changing power and cooling requirements for AI infrastructure. A planned 360 MW Nvidia-powered AI data center in Indonesia shows how quickly regional capacity is growing.

APAC methane cuts lag technical potential

The IEA estimates fossil fuel operations in South and Southeast Asia emitted about 13 million metric tons of methane in 2025. More than 60% came from coal, with the remainder from oil and gas. India and Indonesia were the region’s largest fossil fuel methane emitters.

Existing technology could cut methane emissions across South and Southeast Asia by more than 50%, with 60% of those reductions achievable at no net cost to producers. Under stated policies, emissions are projected to fall only 10% by 2030 and almost 20% by 2035.

China faces a similar gap. More than 90% of available methane reductions in its oil and gas sector could be achieved at no net cost, according to the IEA.

Greater operating efficiency does not necessarily reduce absolute emissions. Operators procuring AI tools should track production KPIs and emissions KPIs separately so efficiency gains are not treated as evidence of a climate benefit without a measured reduction in emissions.

Read more: Australia’s AI boom is also reshaping capital spending, with data centers accounting for a growing share of private investment as demand for compute infrastructure accelerates.

French publishers have escalated their dispute with Google over AI search, asking France’s competition watchdog to decide whether AI Overviews and AI Mode require separate licensing negotiations. The Alliance de la Presse d’Information Générale, or APIG, filed the complaint on Aug. 11.

Google launched both features in France on July 22. APIG argues the rollout conflicts with commitments requiring Google to negotiate separately over new services, putting the treatment of publisher content in generative search back before French regulators.

The complaint joins other legal and regulatory challenges surrounding AI Overviews, including disputes over publisher compensation and responsibility for generated answers. Google says AI Overviews and AI Mode help users explore complex questions while continuing to provide links to websites.

Google’s publisher commitments face an AI test

France adopted a related-rights law in 2019 that gave press publishers and news agencies protections over certain digital uses of their content. The Competition Authority ordered Google in 2020 to negotiate with publishers in good faith and fined it €500 million the following year for failing to comply with those interim measures.

In June 2022, the Authority made Google’s publisher commitments legally binding. They require good-faith negotiations based on transparent, objective and nondiscriminatory criteria, with a remuneration proposal due within three months of the start of negotiations.

The commitments also require separate negotiations over Google Showcase or any other new Google service, apart from existing uses of protected press content. APIG argues AI Overviews and AI Mode fall under that provision.

Generative AI has already figured into enforcement of the agreement. In March 2024, the Authority fined Google €250 million after finding, among other violations, that Bard, now Gemini, had used publisher and news-agency content to train its foundation model without adequately informing them. The regulator also said it had not determined whether AI uses of press publications fall within France’s related-rights protections.

Publisher controls remain disputed

APIG says Google introduced its AI search features without first opening a separate negotiation with publishers. The complaint follows concern that Google’s AI search expansion could reduce publisher visibility as generated answers occupy more of the search experience.

Google says a Search Console control available in France lets site owners exclude content from generative AI search features without using that decision as a ranking signal for conventional search results.

Pressure over AI content use extends beyond France. The European Commission opened a formal antitrust investigation in December 2025 into whether Google imposes unfair terms on publishers whose content is used for AI Overviews and AI Mode. Separately, publishers have sued Google over Gemini training, alleging existing agreements did not authorize the use of copyrighted works to train its AI models.

The French authority has not announced how it will respond to APIG’s complaint. Any eventual ruling could help determine whether generative search becomes a separate licensing channel or remains part of the long-standing exchange of publisher content for search visibility and traffic.

Read more: Similar tensions are emerging outside traditional news publishing as Reddit reportedly reconsiders parts of its Google AI partnership while AI search changes how users reach source websites.

A hacking and extortion gang has taken credit for a cyberattack and data breach at Uber Freight, the ride-sharing giant’s logistics subsidiary.

A spokesperson for Uber Freight told Reuters, which first reported the incident, that there was no effect on its business operations and that its systems were running normally (The company did not immediately respond to TechCrunch’s questions about the incident.)

The shipping company is the latest victim in a spate of hacks in recent weeks conducted by the Helix hacking group, which has targeted transportation companies, financial giants, and private equity firms throughout the year. The hackers are known for targeting companies and exfiltrating large amounts of data from their cloud environments, which they then threaten to publish if the victim companies do not pay a ransom.

In a post on its data leak site, which it uses to host the stolen files, the Helix hackers claim to have taken mailboxes, cloud storage drives, files relating to accounts payable and dispatch documents from Uber Freight.

Some of the files seen by TechCrunch appear to show email correspondence between Uber Freight and several of its customers. TechCrunch could not immediately verify the authenticity of the files, which appeared to be dated around mid-June.

Uber Freight has not yet said if it received any correspondence from the hackers, or if it paid the hackers a ransom. 

Google said earlier this week that the Helix hacking group is part of a wider umbrella collective of hackers that it tracks as UNC6671. The gang relies on social engineering tactics, such as voice phishing, a tactic that involves calling up IT helpdesks and requesting the reset of employee passwords. Security researchers have long warned that these attacks, while crude and rudimentary, are highly effective at tricking humans into granting access to sensitive systems.

In its blog post, Google said a review of the gang’s bitcoin wallets shows it has made at least $10.6 million in ransom payments between January and May this year.