Jun 19, 2025 6:00 AM

How Much Energy Does AI Use? The People Who Know Aren’t Saying

A growing body of research attempts to put a number on energy use and AI—even as the companies behind the most popular models keep their carbon emissions a secret.

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“People are often curious about how much energy a ChatGPT query uses,” Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, wrote in an aside in a long blog post last week. The average query, Altman wrote, uses 0.34 watt-hours of energy: “About what an oven would use in a little over one second, or a high-efficiency lightbulb would use in a couple of minutes.”

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Molly Taft is a senior writer for WIRED, covering climate change, energy, and the environment. Previously, they were a reporter and editor at Drilled, an investigative climate multimedia reporting project. Before that, they wrote about climate change and technology for Gizmodo, and served as a contributing editor for the New ... Read More

Senior Writer, Climate

Topicsscience environment artificial intelligence Energy

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