The AI Starter Pack, yes, but…

3 minutes

Myriam Blanchet

Analyst

Published : 7 May 2025

Artificial Intelligence
Article

We would like to explain to you how the starter pack generated by artificial intelligence LLMs (Large Language Models or Generative AI) impact the environment (in a text made 100% by a human)!

700 million requests

Since the launch of the starter pack, ChatGPT has processed over 700 million image requests this week (article from April 10). Here are the statistics released by Carnegie Mellon University:

A starter pack, or the request for an image of this type, requires as much energy as the consumption of half a phone, that is to say, reaching 50% battery on your cell phone by generating a single image. Boom, you went from 100% at the start of the day to 50% battery a minute later 🤯
An image requires 2 to 5 liters of water to cool the servers. For comparison, your dishwasher typically uses 15 to 25 liters of water to operate. So after 3 requests for a starter pack, we can start a dishwashing cycle…
Generating 1,000 images produces 6.5 km of greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) in a gasoline-powered vehicle. For those who had to run 5 km in high school, remember that 6.5 km is still a long way!

To take into account

While AI has some very great benefits (which we will see in other articles of ours), its carbon footprint is also a major source of stress for scientists around the world.

According to the Commission on Ethics in Science and Technology , here are 2 interesting things to consider when using generative models:

Submitting a query to a generative AI could consume up to 30 times more energy than using a traditional search engine. So return to Google a few times when your question can easily be answered there.
Producing a 100-word email with GPT-4 would consume about 500 milliliters of water , depending on where the model is hosted. Let’s get a little more creative with our email replies! We also suggest using the “Dictate” feature if you ever want to speed up writing your response 😉

We hope this has opened your eyes a little to using ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot and other Gen AI agents!