How much of a problem is AI’s water use?
dihydrogen monoxide usage trends AI’s water footprint is growing, but location and cooling technology make a difference. Credit: Getty Images “Protect our water,” “Water for people not AI,” “Don’t mess with our water,” declare protest signs from Texas to New Mexico to Arizona.
Why It Matters
This story touches on water, how, much — topics readers are actively tracking. Review and add editorial context before publishing.
Key Facts
- Fact 1: The processors inside data centers can reach internal temperatures of up to 176° Fahrenheit, for the same reasons that an overtaxed laptop heats up.
- Fact 2: Claims circulating online bring scant clarity, ranging from articles claiming that chatbots can consume 500 ml of water per query to some online commentators declaring AI’s water issue to be nonexistent.
- Fact 3: Researchers have estimated that data center cooling systems consumed 66 billion liters of water in 2023, less than 1 percent of the nation’s total consumption.
- Fact 4: Electrical and computer engineer Shaolei Ren of the University of California, Riverside, says that an estimate he made based on GPT-4, an earlier version of the model powering ChatGPT, as recently as 2024—that drafting a short email would consume 500 milliliters of water—is already outdated because AI models have become more efficient.
dihydrogen monoxide usage trends AI’s water footprint is growing, but location and cooling technology make a difference. Credit: Getty Images “Protect our water,” “Water for people not AI,” “Don’t mess with our water,” declare protest signs from Texas to New Mexico to Arizona.
Angered by water use, energy consumption, and pollution, locals are increasingly protesting the rapid expansion of data centers in the United States as tech companies work to rapidly expand capacity for AI. Many data centers rely at least partly on water to absorb heat from air or surfaces, and then cause cooling as it evaporates, just like sweating keeps our bodies cool. The processors inside data centers can reach internal temperatures of up to 176° Fahrenheit, for the same reasons that an overtaxed laptop heats up.
(Original synthesis pending human/AI review — generated by the stub provider by selecting real sentences from the source material, not by writing new analysis or commentary.)
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