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Every ChatGPT query you make uses water, and Sam Altman has revealed the exact figure

ChatGPT use consumes water, and Sam Altman has now revealed the figures in his latest blog, ‘The Gentle Singularity’.

Published on: Jun 11, 2025 02:48 PM IST

Generative AI has now become part and parcel of our daily lives. Many organisations are resorting to using chatbots, like ChatGPT, and even the LLMs behind these chatbots to get their work done through agent tech, AI, and whatnot. However, what if we told you that OpenAI's boss and the man behind ChatGPT, Sam Altman, recently revealed how much water is used for every one of your ChatGPT queries?

ChatGPT essays miss key elements that experts notice
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By Shaurya Sharma

Shaurya Sharma is the Technology Editor at Hindustan Times Digital Streams, where he oversees technology coverage across digital and social platforms. With over eight years of experience across editorial, video production, and digital media, his work focuses on smartphones, AI, consumer gadgets, and shaping audience-first content strategies for modern tech consumers.

He began his career in 2018 as a fashion cinematographer before turning his lifelong passion for technology into a profession. From spending his childhood immersed in tech magazines, video games, and the latest gadgets to covering the global consumer tech industry today, technology has remained a constant throughout his journey.

Over the years, Shaurya has worked with some of India’s leading media organisations, including CNN-News18, Sportskeeda, and Guiding Tech, where he led video initiatives that combined strong editorial storytelling with engaging visual and social-first execution.

A graduate in Journalism and Mass Communication from Manipal University, Shaurya has reviewed hundreds of products across categories including smartphones, laptops, gaming consoles, cameras, and wearables. Beyond work, he is passionate about animal welfare, environmental causes, and automobiles, particularly turbo-petrol cars

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This was revealed in a blog post by Sam Altman himself, titled 'The Gentle Singularity'. He revealed this while talking about data centre production, automation, and the cost of intelligence eventually converging to near the cost of electricity.

Here's what Altman said

Sam Altman stated that people are often curious about how much energy a ChatGPT query uses. In terms of electricity, it is about 0.34 watt-hours. This is something an oven would use in over one second, or a high-efficiency light bulb would use in a little over a couple of minutes. As for the water, Altman says that a query uses about 0.000085 gallons of water (0.00032 litres), which in real-world equivalent is about one-fifteenth of a teaspoon.

So, for example, using ChatGPT 1,000 times would result in approximately 0.32 litres of water being consumed.

Why are energy consumption and carbon footprint a concern with AI?

Well, time and again, it has been propagated that running these AI models requires large data centres and large compute power. And for all of that work, you do need more electricity, more power generation, and of course, water. This is where the larger carbon footprint comes into play.

Having said that, while Altman does mention some figures in his official blog post, it is not really clear how he came to these conclusions or if there has been research about this at OpenAI.

What is Altman's prediction for the future?

Apart from telling users how much water a simple ChatGPT query can consume, Altman also had some wild guesses about what the future could hold. By 2035, he said, maybe we will go from solving high-energy physics one year to bringing space colonisation the next year, or from a major material science breakthrough one year to true high-bandwidth brain-computer interfaces the next year. Many people will choose to live their lives in much the same way, but at least some people will probably decide to “plug in."

 
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