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While ChatGPT generates more carbon dioxide than many of its competitors, Elon Musk’s Grok AI is the most environmentally friendly, according to new research.
The rise of generative AI tools may be having an impact on businesses and industries around the world, boosting productivity and streamlining processes, but they represent a real cost in environmental terms.
The data centres that power chatbots and large language models consume vast amounts of water and energy, leading to a dangerously large carbon footprint.
New research from US firm TRG Datacenters has now attempted to put a figure on the carbon dioxide produced by just a single query of a raft of popular AI platforms, based on “standard energy grid assumptions”.
“As AI adoption continues to rise, finding ways to reduce its energy consumption will be key. Some models are already designed to be more efficient, but there is still room for improvement,” a spokesperson for TRG Datacenters said in a statement.
The figures are far from precise, but instead are an approximation designed to provide a window into AI’s ongoing sustainability.
TRG’s research revealed that ChatGPT generates the most CO₂ for every query it answers, while Grok AI, owned by Elon Musk, generates the least. Here’s the full breakdown, expressed in grams of CO₂:
| Grok AI | 0.17 |
| Google Gemini | 1.6 |
| LLaMA (Meta AI) | 3.2 |
| Claude AI | 3.5 |
| Perplexity AI | 4 |
| ChatGPT (GPT-4) | 4.32 |
Grok AI comes out on top thanks to an architecture that is designed around lower power consumption. Each Grok AI query is roughly on par with a single Google search.
ChatGPT, on the other hand, is particularly compute-intensive, leading to an environmental impact 25 times larger than Grok AI. One ChatGPT query generates the equivalent amount of CO₂ as sending 21 emails or fully charging one smartphone.
“Advances in hardware, more optimised AI models, and increased use of renewable energy in data centers could help lower emissions over time. AI is here to stay, but balancing innovation with sustainability will be essential in minimising its environmental impact,” TRG said.
Given ChatGPT’s place in the rankings, we thought we’d ask the chatbot itself how much CO₂ it produced.
“The carbon footprint of a single AI query can vary based on model size, hardware, and data center efficiency,” ChatGPT said before estimating its CO₂ emissions at between 0.02 to 0.05 grams per short query.
“So individually, a ChatGPT query has a small footprint – but at scale, it adds up. If a billion queries are run in a month – at 0.05g per query, that’s ~50 metric tons of CO₂/month.”
As to the number of queries ChatGPT fields, the bot said it had over 100 million active users as of late 2023.
“If even a fraction of those users ask just a few questions a day, you’re looking at billions of queries monthly across the whole system,” ChatGPT said.
David Hollingworth has been writing about technology for over 20 years, and has worked for a range of print and online titles in his career. He is enjoying getting to grips with cyber security, especially when it lets him talk about Lego.
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