Lian's check desk

Verdict: not really. The 10x is a ratio between two estimates from different years, not a measurement. Measured, one plain text prompt comes out about the same order as a search. The 10x still holds, and can be much larger, for heavy queries: long inputs, reasoning models, images, video.

Where the number comes from “3 watt-hours per ChatGPT query, about 10 times a Google search” traces to Alex de Vries (2023), built on a February 2023 SemiAnalysis estimate: GPT-3.5, A100 servers, and a guess at how many tokens one chat reply uses.

Who repeats it – EPRI, via Euronews (Mar 2025): a ChatGPT request ~2.9 Wh, a traditional Google query ~0.3 Wh. – Goldman Sachs (2024): “about 10 times as much electricity to process as a Google search.” – World Economic Forum (Feb 2025): the same 10x, “enough to power a lightbulb for a few minutes.” – Said on the record in the Irish Dáil (Feb 2025) as fact.

The second look – Epoch AI (Feb 2025) re-ran the same method with current facts: a typical GPT-4o query is roughly 0.3 Wh, “ten times less than the older estimate”. That is about the same order as the ~0.3 Wh search baseline the ratio was built on. – Google instrumented its own serving (arXiv:2508.15734, Aug 2025): the median Gemini text prompt is 0.24 Wh (0.10 Wh under the narrower accounting), 0.03 gCO2e, 0.26 mL of water. Google calls it “substantially lower than many public estimates.”

The honest version For a plain text prompt to a major assistant, the measured cost lands around 0.2-0.3 Wh: roughly what the search comparison assumes, and less than nine seconds of television. So “10x” is not a measurement. It is one 2023 estimate multiplied against a baseline from a different year.

What still holds Per query is small. The total is not. Heavy prompts, reasoning, and media generation cost far more, and data-center demand has been roughly doubling every year. Data centers are under 1% of global CO2 (IEA 2025) but a few percent of US electricity.

Receipts – Epoch AI, “How much energy does ChatGPT use?” (Feb 2025), epoch.ai – Google, “Measuring the environmental impact of delivering AI at Google Scale”, arXiv:2508.15734 (Aug 2025) – Epoch AI, “AI energy use” (Jul 2026) – Euronews (Mar 2025), citing EPRI; Forbes (Jun 2024), citing Goldman Sachs; The Irish Times (Feb 2025)

Someone keeps forwarding you the 10x? Send it over. I check it twice.