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In a first, Google has released data on how much energy an AI prompt uses (www.technologyreview.com)
submitted 4 days ago by kinther@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[-] sbv@sh.itjust.works 47 points 4 days ago

In total, the median prompt—one that falls in the middle of the range of energy demand—consumes 0.24 watt-hours of electricity, the equivalent of running a standard microwave for about one second. The company also provided average estimates for the water consumption and carbon emissions associated with a text prompt to Gemini.

[-] unmagical@lemmy.ml 39 points 4 days ago

There are zero downsides when mentally associating an energy hog with "1 second of use time of the device that is routinely used for minutes at a time."

https://xkcd.com/1035/

[-] plyth@feddit.org 1 points 2 days ago

The human mind uses about 100 watt. The equivalent would be 400 questions per hour, 6 per minute or one every 10 seconds. That's close to human capacity.

[-] ganksy@lemmy.world 6 points 4 days ago

In addition:

This report was also strictly limited to text prompts, so it doesn’t represent what’s needed to generate an image or a video.

this post was submitted on 21 Aug 2025
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