AI has a hidden water cost— here’s how to calculate yours

Artificial intelligence systems are thirsty, consuming as much as 500 milliliters of water – a single-serving water bottle – for each short conversation a user has with the GPT-3 version of OpenAI’s ChatGPT system. They use roughly the same amount of water to draft a 100-word email message.

That figure includes the water used to cool the data center’s servers and the water consumed at the power plants generating the electricity to run them.