Thanking your AI chatbot when it provides a response to a query may not require much energy on its own, but the cost of your interactions will add up over time—and a new tool from Hugging Face can tell you approximately how much.
The ChatUI energy interface estimates the energy consumption involved in messaging with an AI model in real time, with comparisons to common appliances like LED light bulbs and phone chargers. You can type in any query or utilize one of the suggested inputs to generate a response along with the corresponding energy requirement.
For example, a “professional email” took an AI just over 25 seconds to create and required 0.5 watt-hours, the equivalent of 2.67% of a phone charge. A 90-second script for testing transcription software required 1.4 watt-hours—7.37% of a phone charge, 22 minutes of an LED bulb, or 0.6 seconds of microwave use. (Responding to my “thank you” equaled 0.2% of a phone charge.)
Note that ChatUI is approximating, not providing exact measurements. The tool can run on various models, including Meta’s Llama 3.3 70B and Google’s Gemma 3.
How AI energy use compares to a Google search
According to estimates from the International Energy Agency (IEA), a single ChatGPT request requires nearly 10 times the electricity of a typical Google search at 2.9 watt-hours vs. 0.2 watt-hours, respectively. If ChatGPT was utilized in all 9 billion daily searches, that would require nearly 10 terawatt-hours of additional electricity per year, the equivalent usage of 1.5 million European Union residents.
AI’s environmental impact comes in large part from the power and water demands of running data centers. The IEA expects global AI electricity consumption to be ten times in 2026 what it was in 2023, and the water requirements by 2027 could be more than the entire annual usage of all of Denmark.
