A 2024 Washington Post analysis, produced with researchers at the University of California, Riverside, estimated that using ChatGPT with GPT-4 to write an average 100-word email at an average American data center consumes roughly a bottle of water per email. The broader scientific work behind these estimates comes from a paper titled *Making AI Less “Thirsty”*, first posted to arXiv in 2023, which estimated that a model such as GPT-3 could consume about 500 milliliters of water for roughly 10 to 50 medium-length responses. Data centers use water directly for evaporative cooling and indirectly through electricity generation. Li and colleagues projected that global AI demand could account for 4.2 to 6.6 billion cubic meters of water withdrawal in 2027, a range they compared with about half of the United Kingdom's annual water withdrawal.