lets talk.
Whenever I see writers using AI, carelessly ignoring the glaring impacts it has on the environment, especially Memphis, it genuinely breaks my heart because it's viewed as 'not that deep'
Words by Irina Tumbovska:
Let's talk about something we don't often think about when we use AI tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, DeepSeek, DALL·E, Midjourney, Runway, or even your favorite recommendation algorithms on Netflix, Spotify, TikTok etc: WATER.
Yes, water.
It turns out that AI has a huge thirst, and it's not just for data. Behind every AI-generated meme, essay, image, video, playlist suggestion, blog post, social media caption, voice synthesis, chatbot response, deepfake, real-time translation, and even AI-powered code generation lies a massive amount of water used to keep the technology running.
AI runs on powerful computers housed in data centers. These data centers are like the brains of AI, but they generate a lot of heat. To keep them from overheating, they need to be cooled down and that's where water comes in.
Cooling systems in data centers use water to absorb and dissipate heat. Think of it like sweating on a hot day, but on a much, much larger scale. For every kilowatt-hour (kWh) of energy used in these cooling systems, up to 9 liters of water can be consumed. That's enough to fill a large water bottle!
And it's not just a little water. Big tech companies like Google and Microsoft are using billions of liters of water every year to keep their data centers cool.
When you interact with AI tools like ChatGPT, you're not just exchanging words you're also using water. Researchers estimate that every 20 to 50 prompts you give to ChatGPT can consume about 500 milliliters of water.
Now, imagine every time you asked AI a question, you had to pour out that amount of water. A single prompt might not seem like much just 500 milliliters as we said.. but now picture millions of people doing this every day, over and over again. Including you.
