How much electricity and water does each time you use ChatGPT use? This is a mystery that was only revealed today by Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI. In a blog post published this morning, Altman said that on average, one question asked to ChatGPT uses 0.34 Wh of electricity and 0.31 mL of water. This is the equivalent of using an oven for one second or 1/15th the volume of a teacup.
OpenAI published their article a few weeks after MIT Technology Review reported that asking a chatbot 15 questions, generating 10 images with generative AI and generating 3 5-second videos used an estimated 2.9 kWh of electricity, equivalent to running a microwave oven continuously for 3.5 hours.
The figures shared by OpenAI seem low, but every day their service is accessed by hundreds of millions of users who perform more than 100,000 questions a day. The reality is that artificial intelligence (AI) data centers use so much electricity that Meta, Google and Amazon have entered into contracts to use nuclear power to reduce their annual carbon emissions.