Environmental impacts of artificial intelligence
Water usage
Water usage
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Cooling AI servers can demand large amounts of fresh water which is evaporated in [cooling towers](/wiki/Cooling_towers "Cooling towers"). By 2027, AI may use up to 6\.6 billion cubic meters of water. One professor has estimated that an average session on ChatGPT, with 10–50 responses, can use up to a half\-liter of fresh water. Training GPT\-3 may have used 700,000 liters of water, equivalent to the [water footprint](/wiki/Water_footprint "Water footprint") of manufacturing 320 [Tesla EVs](/wiki/Tesla_Electric_Car "Tesla Electric Car").

One data center that Microsoft had considered building near Phoenix, due to increasing AI usage, was likely to consume up to 56 million gallons of fresh water each year, equivalent to the water footprints of 670 families. Microsoft may have increased water consumption by 34% due to AI, while Google increased its water usage by 20% due to AI. Due to their Iowa data center cluster, Microsoft was responsible for 6% of the freshwater use in a local town.


Can we replace traditional cooling methods for AI servers with more water-efficient ones?