🌅 How Much Water AI Uses

SOURCE

University of California, Riverside and The Washington Post

WHAT TO KNOW

• Generating a single 100-word email using an AI model like ChatGPT requires 519 milliliters (17.5 ounces) of water to cool the model’s servers, equivalent to a little more than one standard water bottle (16.9 oz). If 1 out of 10 working Americans (around 16 million people) generate one email using AI each week, the models would need more than 435 million liters of water to cool themselves, about the same amount of water consumed by all Rhode Island households for 1.5 days.

WHY IT MATTERS

• The amount of water used by AI data centers varies widely based on geographic location, with centers in Washington requiring nearly seven times as much water as centers in Texas. Other research shows around two-thirds of all new data centers built or in development in the U.S. since 2022 are located in places facing high levels of water stress.

CONNECT THE DOTS

• Data centers that can’t use water turn to electricity to cool their servers, requiring 0.14 kilowatt-hours for every user query, enough electricity to power 14 LED light bulbs for 1 hour. Along with cooling, the massive amounts of energy required to power AI servers has pushed tech companies and industry stakeholders toward a new trend: on-site renewable energy.