But three months later the company launched a larger, higher-quality model that produces five-second videos at 16 frames per second ... The new model uses more than 30 times more energy on each 5-second video: about 3.4 million joules, more than 700 times the energy required to generate a high-quality image.
What one action is
One 5-second video at 16 frames per second from the newer, larger CogVideoX model
Model or version
CogVideoX (the larger model launched three months after the August version; exact version not stated)
Method
Measured by Sasha Luccioni (Hugging Face) with Code Carbon; the article does not say whether the doubling for non-GPU energy was applied.
Claimed by
Independent: MIT Technology Review (James O'Donnell and Casey Crownhart)
Paid for by
Tarbell Center for AI Journalism (grant)
History
Added.
Older CogVideoX video at 8 frames per second (MIT Technology Review)
30.3 Wh per video at 8 frames per second (length not stated) (published as: about 109,000 joules; converted from J to Wh)
An older version of the model, released in August, made videos at just eight frames per second at a grainy resolution—more like a GIF than a video. Each one required about 109,000 joules to produce.
What one action is
One video from the older CogVideoX model, at 8 frames per second and a grainy resolution
Model or version
CogVideoX (the older version released in August; exact version not stated)
Method
Measured by Sasha Luccioni (Hugging Face) with Code Carbon; the article does not say whether the doubling for non-GPU energy was applied.
Claimed by
Independent: MIT Technology Review (James O'Donnell and Casey Crownhart)
Paid for by
Tarbell Center for AI Journalism (grant)
History
Added.
AnimateDiff video at default settings, Video Killed the Energy Budget
a mean of 0.14 Wh per video (16 frames, 512 × 512, 10 fps, 4 denoising steps)
We observe orders-of-magnitude disparities: AnimateDiff requires only 0.14 Wh in total, while WAN2.1-T2V-14B consumes over 415 Wh, a factor of nearly 3000×.
What one action is
One video from AnimateDiff at its default Hugging Face settings (16 frames at 10 fps, 512 × 512, 4 steps), averaged over 50 prompts with five runs each
Scope
servers
Counts
GPU energy; CPU energy; RAM energy (estimated)
Model or version
AnimateDiff
Method
Run on one dedicated NVIDIA H100 SXM GPU with an 8-core AMD EPYC 7R13 CPU; GPU and CPU energy measured with CodeCarbon, RAM energy estimated with CodeCarbon's default heuristic; two warm-ups and five runs per prompt.
We observe orders-of-magnitude disparities: AnimateDiff requires only 0.14 Wh in total, while WAN2.1-T2V-14B consumes over 415 Wh, a factor of nearly 3000×.
What one action is
One video from WAN2.1-T2V-14B at its default Hugging Face settings (81 frames at 15 fps, 720 × 1280, 50 steps), averaged over 50 prompts with five runs each
Scope
servers
Counts
GPU energy; CPU energy; RAM energy (estimated)
Model or version
WAN2.1-T2V-14B
Method
Run on one dedicated NVIDIA H100 SXM GPU with an 8-core AMD EPYC 7R13 CPU; GPU and CPU energy measured with CodeCarbon, RAM energy estimated with CodeCarbon's default heuristic; two warm-ups and five runs per prompt.