Edit: It’s interesting how this snippet always gets downvoted without explanation. Let’s not be like the crazies. Acknowledge the facts even if you don’t like the technology.
Using chatbots emits the same tiny amounts of CO2 as other normal things we do online, and way less than most offline things we do. Even when you include “hidden costs” like training, the emissions from making hardware, energy used in cooling, and AI chips idling between prompts, the carbon cost of an average chatbot prompt adds up to less than 1/150,000th of the average American’s daily emissions. Water is similar. Everything we do uses a lot of water. Most electricity is generated using water, and most of the way AI “uses” water is actually just in generating its electricity. The average American’s daily water footprint is ~800,000 times as much as the full cost of an AI prompt. The actual amount of water used per prompt in data centers themselves is vanishingly small.
Because chatbot prompts use so little energy and water, if you’re sitting and reading the full responses they generate, it’s very likely that you’re using way less energy and water than you otherwise would in your daily life. It takes ~1000 prompts to raise your emissions by 1%. If you sat at your computer all day, sending and reading 1000 prompts in a row, you wouldn’t be doing more energy intensive things like driving, or using physical objects you own that wear out, need to be replaced, and cost emissions and water to make. Every second you spend walking outside wears out your sneakers just a little bit, to the point that they eventually need to be replaced. Sneakers cost water to make. My best guess is that every second of walking uses as much water in expectation as ~7 chatbot prompts. So sitting inside at your computer saves that water too. It seems like it’s near impossible to raise your personal emissions and water footprint at all using chatbots, because using all day on something that ends up causing 1% of your normal emissions is exactly like spending all day on an activity that costs only 1% of the money you normally spend.
There are no other situations, anywhere, where we worry about amounts of energy and water this small. I can’t find any other places where people have gotten worried about things they do that use such tiny amounts of energy. Chatbot energy and water use being a problem is a really bizarre meme that has taken hold, I think mostly because people are surprised that chatbots are being used by so many people that on net their total energy and water use is noticeable. Being “mindful” with your chatbot usage is kind of like filling a large pot of water to boil to make food, and before boiling it, taking a pipet and removing tiny drops of the water from the pot at a time to “only use the water you need” or stopping your shower a tenth of a second early for the sake of the climate. You do not need to be “mindful” with your chatbot usage for the same reason you don’t need to be “mindful” about those additional droplets of water you boil.
The usage metrics for energy that support his argument came from Sam Altman. And this is also terrible reasoning in regard to water usage, because it doesn’t really matter that the prompts are only 0.3ml. Since the rest comes from generating a response. Also, it’s 0.5 -1.5l of water not 2 ml. Because again he’s using AI tech oligarchs as his source, in this case, Google. So the water usage is minimized by several orders of magnitude.
However, that 2 mL of water is mostly the water used in the normal power plants the data center draws from. The prompt itself only uses about 0.3 mL, so if you’re mainly worried about the water data centers use per prompt, you use about 300,000 times as much every day in your normal life.
Just read through your link and the journal it uses as a source. While the journal seems fine, the article itself makes claims that are not backed up by the journal and does not seem to cite any other sources for those claims. For instance, the claim that LLMs use 1.5L of water per 100 word reply seems to have been pulled out of thin air.
But again I’m going to restate that the article you posted uses tech oligarchs as primary sources. Which just on the face of it looks like green washing.
Edit: I read the paper. Yeah the conclusion is tech is seriously underestimating water and carbon footprint. We don’t have exact figures because they don’t disclose them. But from what we can gather the information they are giving us substantially down plays the environmental impact.
So, we don’t have exact figures. And acting as though we do using tech oligarch statistics is greenwashing 🤷♀️
I’ve read through the sources and links, and there is sanity checking and 3rd party input. The numbers from Google were also published in a white paper, so there’s a reasonable level of transparency and verifiability. While they shouldn’t be taken entirely at their word, there’s currently little reason to think their figures aren’t at least in the ballpark of the actual data.
Edit: It’s interesting how this snippet always gets downvoted without explanation. Let’s not be like the crazies. Acknowledge the facts even if you don’t like the technology.
Source for the claim on using less water than YouTube or Netflix (or even walking, for that matter)
The usage metrics for energy that support his argument came from Sam Altman. And this is also terrible reasoning in regard to water usage, because it doesn’t really matter that the prompts are only 0.3ml. Since the rest comes from generating a response. Also, it’s 0.5 -1.5l of water not 2 ml. Because again he’s using AI tech oligarchs as his source, in this case, Google. So the water usage is minimized by several orders of magnitude.
https://www.profolus.com/topics/ai-water-consumption-2025-rivals-global-bottled-water-demand/
Just read through your link and the journal it uses as a source. While the journal seems fine, the article itself makes claims that are not backed up by the journal and does not seem to cite any other sources for those claims. For instance, the claim that LLMs use 1.5L of water per 100 word reply seems to have been pulled out of thin air.
I will take a look at the original article.
But again I’m going to restate that the article you posted uses tech oligarchs as primary sources. Which just on the face of it looks like green washing.
Edit: I read the paper. Yeah the conclusion is tech is seriously underestimating water and carbon footprint. We don’t have exact figures because they don’t disclose them. But from what we can gather the information they are giving us substantially down plays the environmental impact.
So, we don’t have exact figures. And acting as though we do using tech oligarch statistics is greenwashing 🤷♀️
For anyone following along.
https://www.cell.com/patterns/fulltext/S2666-3899(25)00278-8
I’ve read through the sources and links, and there is sanity checking and 3rd party input. The numbers from Google were also published in a white paper, so there’s a reasonable level of transparency and verifiability. While they shouldn’t be taken entirely at their word, there’s currently little reason to think their figures aren’t at least in the ballpark of the actual data.