Artificial integrity? Legal, ethical and technological perspectives on AI greenwashing

Artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly transforming the landscape of environmental communications, playing a paradoxical role in both mitigating and amplifying greenwashing practices. This paper critically examines the dual function of AI in sustainability discourse: as a tool for detecting and verifying corporate environmental claims, and simultaneously, as a mechanism that can obscure accountability through algorithmic opacity and automated marketing. Drawing on legal, ethical, and technological perspectives, the paper explores how AI systems contribute to the evolving sophistication of greenwashing while also offering new means of resistance. It identifies critical gaps in current regulatory frameworks, technological design, and public governance, and advocates for a multidimensional response grounded in ethical AI principles, legal reform, and civic empowerment. The paper concludes with a forward-looking agenda for research and policy, highlighting the need for algorithmic transparency, robust third-party auditing, and inclusive governance models to ensure that AI technologies enhance rather than erode ecological integrity and sustainability accountability.