The average ChatGPT request uses ~0.34Wh

I’ve written quite extensively about ChatGPT energy usage over the past few months (e.g. here, here, here, and here). Digging through various sources and papers, I finally estimated that a simple, text-only ChatGPT request consumes about 0.2 Wh.

This was in stark contrast to many other estimates floating around, often suggesting energy use at least an order of magnitude higher.

OpenAI had remained silent on this - until now. Yesterday, in a blog post, OpenAI co-founder and CEO Sam Altman revealed that “the average (ChatGPT) query uses about 0.34 watt-hours”.

Bingo. Of course, it would be nice to eventually see a detailed analysis. At this point, you could of course argue you don’t trust OpenAI / Sam Altman, and hence you don’t trust this data. But in as far as we take the CEO of the most important AI company by his word, the question is now settled.

0.34 Wh is still 70% higher than 0.2 Wh, but the important thing was to get the order of magnitude right, and given how much energy image and video generation uses, and that Sam is talking about the average query, I don’t see any reason to update my 0.2 Wh estimate for a text-only ChatGPT request.

Allow me therefore to repost this figure, which seems to have aged well (even though it is only a few months old, but in the AI world, that’s pretty old 😇).

Allow me also to make the point again that this doesn’t absolve us from thinking deeply about the coming explosion due to energy needs. Here as well, I am sticking to my guns, arguing that we may currently be underestimating our overall energy needs, and dramatically so.

In short: While a concern about exploding energy requirements in a world full of AI agents remains entirely defensible, regular chatbot use is really nothing to worry about in terms of energy use.

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