OpenAI CEO’s almond‑water analogy misrepresents AI’s actual water use

You’ve probably heard that using artificial intelligence consumes a lot of water. But how does it measure up with snacking on almonds?

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman made the comparison in a recent interview. OpenAI is the company that makes ChatGPT, the popular AI chat app.

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“For every 38,000 ChatGPT queries, that is the same amount of water that is used in the production of a single almond in California,” he said in a Sept. 1 episode of the Sources Podcast.

Altman prefaced that by saying he isn’t sure of the exact number, and it “might be wrong, but it’s close.”

How close is it?

Altman appears to be drawing from information about ChatGPT average water use that he published in 2025 on his blog, and a 2019 study measuring the water use of California almond farming.

Altman said in that blog post that the average ChatGPT query uses 0.000085 gallons of water — about 0.32 milliliters, or 1/15th of a teaspoon. Altman’s post is the only source we found for that number. OpenAI does not publicize details about its overall water consumption, and the company did not respond to PolitiFact’s request for more information.

A 2019 study found that the process of growing a single California almond requires 3.2 gallons, or 12 liters, of water. That study counted more than just the direct water used to grow almonds. It also included rainfall and water quality impact in the measurement. If you compare those two numbers — dividing 12 liters (or 12,000 milliliters) for an almond by 0.32 milliliters for a ChatGPT query — you get 37,500, close to Altman’s figure.

But Altman’s figure is misleading. It overstates the amount of water consumed by almond agriculture, and uses a relatively low ChatGPT water use estimate that is unconfirmed and disputed.

How AI and almonds stack up

Agriculture uses vastly more water than the AI industry and data centers overall. Nationally, farms consumed nearly 30 trillion gallons of water for crop irrigation in 2020, the most recent data available. Meanwhile, data centers nationwide used about 228 billion gallons of water in 2023. Many AI data centers use water for cooling systems to keep computers from overheating, while other systems use very little water but more electricity to keep the computers cool. Water is also used in some forms of electricity generation, so the power needed to run the data centers also often consumes water.

But the total water consumed by a single ChatGPT message is hard to measure and depends on many factors like the type of cooling and power used by a data center and the energy efficiency measures the company takes.

“There is very little public information about how today’s ChatGPT systems operate and what resources they use,” said Shaolei Ren, a University of California, Riverside, professor who researches AI’s environmental footprint.

For almonds, the 12-liter-per-almond estimate includes rainwater and “grey water,” which is a measure of what’s needed to dilute pollutants such as fertilizer. About 6.3 liters of the total came from fresh water used for irrigation. A 2021 study produced a similar fresh water estimate of 5.8 liters.

That means a rough estimate of an almond’s direct water consumption is closer to 6 liters — or 1.5 gallons — per almond.

That already cuts Altman’s comparison in half. The information available about water usage for an AI prompt further undercuts his point.

AI’s water demands vary too much to make a solid per-chat assessment. But based on some estimates, you’d need anywhere from 1,000 to 10,000 conversational AI prompts to equal the 6 liters of fresh water used to grow one California almond.

Altman’s 2025 blog post gave no explanation of what was included in the 0.000085 gallon measurement, and OpenAI hasn’t published specific data.

“In general, resource use can vary substantially depending on factors such as the data center location, AI model, prompt and output lengths, inference mode (e.g., reasoning versus non-reasoning), and the efficiency measures used to serve the model,” Ren said.

A Sept. 1 study estimated the total water consumption, including electricity generation, for ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini AI models and determined that ChatGPT’s 4o model used between 0.6 and 17 milliliters — 1/8th of a teaspoon and 3.5 teaspoons, respectively— per prompt, depending on the length of the input.

EcoLogits, a nonprofit site that estimates AI energy impact, said using the newer GPT-5.5 model to write an email — roughly comparable to a prompt and response — consumes 6.11 milliliters of water.

Long-term AI tasks that involve coding and computer use can use far more energy, which requires more water. An April study found that more complex AI tasks can use more than 10 times the energy of an ordinary chat.

PolitiFact ruling

Altman said, “For every 38,000 ChatGPT queries, that is the same amount of water that is used in the production of a single almond in California.”

However, Altman’s comparison relies on a relatively low estimate for ChatGPT’s water use, and a very high estimate for almonds’ water use. Available estimates show you’d need anywhere from 1,000 to 10,000 conversational AI prompts to equal the 6 liters of fresh water used to grow one California almond. OpenAI hasn’t published enough information to verify its estimates of the total water usage for its prompts.

The statement has an element of truth but ignores critical facts that would give a different impression. We rate it Mostly False.