Question 1

How much electricity does an AI prompt use?

Accepted Answer

An average text prompt uses about 0.3 Wh of electricity: the equivalent of an LED bulb on for 2 minutes. Google publishes 0.24 Wh per median Gemini text prompt (August 2025), Epoch AI estimates ~0.30 Wh for ChatGPT (February 2025) and OpenAI reports 0.34 Wh (June 2025). We use 0.3 Wh on a range of 0.24 to 0.4 Wh, inference only, training excluded.

Question 2

How much water does an AI prompt use?

Accepted Answer

An average text prompt uses about 0.3 mL of direct cooling water, i.e. five drops. Google publishes 0.26 mL per median Gemini prompt (August 2025), OpenAI 0.32 mL (June 2025). Counting the upstream water of electricity generation, the estimate rises to around 1.5 mL; Mistral's life-cycle assessment counts 45 mL per response with the whole life cycle included. Scopes differ: every figure states what it includes.

Question 3

How much CO₂ does an AI prompt emit?

Accepted Answer

An average text prompt emits about 0.2 g of CO₂e. There is no official meter: we convert the electricity used with the grid's average carbon intensity (~480 g/kWh), i.e. ~0.15 g in operation and up to ~1 g over the full life cycle. Published reference points: Google reports 0.03 g per median Gemini prompt (largely decarbonised power mix), Mistral 1.14 g per response in a full life-cycle assessment.

Question 4

How much does an AI-generated image use?

Accepted Answer

Generating one image uses about 6 to 12 Wh, i.e. 20 to 40 times a text prompt. The figure comes from public benchmarks (“How Hungry is AI?”, Hugging Face's AI Energy Score): no vendor publishes an official value for image generation to date.

Question 5

How much does a reasoning prompt use?

Accepted Answer

A “reasoning” prompt (the model generates intermediate steps before answering) uses about 15 to 30 Wh, i.e. 50 to 100 times a simple text prompt. These estimates come from public benchmarks on open models; no vendor publishes an official figure for its reasoning modes.

Question 6

How much does an AI-generated video use?

Accepted Answer

From 0.14 Wh to over 400 Wh per clip depending on the model, measured across seven open models by Hugging Face in September 2025. This site uses the median, 25.3 Wh, the equivalent of about 20 minutes of video streaming. It's the heaviest item in consumer AI, and the cost grows faster than the clip's length.

Question 7

How many prompts does AI handle every day?

Accepted Answer

ChatGPT handles about 2.5 billion prompts a day (OpenAI figure, July 2025), i.e. roughly 900 billion a year. Assuming ChatGPT holds about 80% of the market, global text generative AI handles on the order of 1.1 T prompts a year. It's that scale, not the single prompt, that makes the consumption significant.

Question 8

What do vendors publish, model by model?

Accepted Answer

Only three players have published per-request figures so far: Google (Gemini), Mistral (Le Chat) and OpenAI (ChatGPT). Scopes differ, from the full-stack median prompt to the complete life-cycle assessment, and so does the strength of the evidence: details and comparison caveats are on the dedicated pages.

The key figures of an AI prompt