Like Los Angeles is on fire. But angerDisplacing around 180,000 people and destroying 9,000 buildings, many social media users Accusation pointed out On an unusual target: ChatGPT.

Chat GPT and other AI models have a large carbon footprint, which contributes to climate change. Climate change is responsible for drier conditions and warmer temperatures, which in turn create the perfect environment for wildfires to be ignited and spread by strong winds.

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So in a way, ChatGPT is part of the problem by contributing to climate change. But no, ChatGPT didn’t start the fire, and it’s not the city’s fault. The water ran out.

The tweet may have been deleted.

This was stated by Martin Adams, the former general manager of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power Los Angeles Times“The [water] The system was never designed to fight a wildfire that then engulfed a community.” Firefighters ran out of water because the system was not designed to pump enough water over a sustained period of time. There was, not because it was misused by data centers.

Online conversations linking ChatGPT to the LA wildfires were never meant to literally blame AI models for the fires. Instead, it has linked real-time relevance to the growing issue of AI’s impact on the environment.

“We don’t need AI ‘art’. We don’t need AI grocery lists. We don’t need ChatGPT or Gemini or DALL-E or any ‘revolutionary’ technology already in our own human brains. Earth ,” wrote makeup artist and activist Matt Bernstein in one Instagram post which has garnered nearly 500,000 likes.

So, how much water does ChatGPT use?

There are tech giants like Google, Microsoft, and OpenAI. Procrastinator about their energy use. But water consumption can be accessed through public records and calculated by researchers. to 2023 investigations Associated Press Discovered Microsoft’s data centers in Des Moines, Iowa, used to train OpenAI’s GPT-4, require 11.5 million gallons of water to cool its servers, which is the district’s total water supply. is 6 percent.

Oh A recent study by the gave The Washington Post And the University of California, Riverside found that a 100-word email generated by ChatGPT requires about the same volume as a water bottle, or 519 milliliters. 435,235,476 liters of water is used by 16 million people using ChatGPT once a week.

In short, it’s a lot of water. And the thirst for AI isn’t abating anytime soon. A 2023 study UC Riverside estimates AI could use 4.2 to 6.6 billion cubic meters of water in 2027, more than half the UK’s annual water withdrawal.

What about the rest of ChatGPT’s energy consumption?

In Bernstein’s viral Instagram post, he wrote, “A search on ChatGPT uses 10 times as much energy as a Google search. Training an AI model produces the same amount of carbon dioxide as New York and San 300 round-trip flights between Francisco and five times the lifetime emissions of the car.”

These results come from the 2019 University of Massachusetts, Amherst. study Estimating the environmental cost of GPT-2, OpenAI’s initial AI model. And with OpenAI’s own reporting of 300 weekly active users by December 2024, ChatGPT usage continues to grow.

In terms of the electrical input required to support its massive computing power, Sajjad Mozini, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Washington Estimation ChatGPT uses 1 gigawatt-hour (GWh) a day, “which is equivalent to the daily energy consumption of about 33,000 American households.”

ChatGPT is not directly responsible for the Los Angeles fires, but witnessing the devastation in real time reveals the environmental cost of using AI to write emails.

And if you want to help but aren’t sure where to start, gave Los Angeles Times Here is a great guide.