Ever wonder how much energy it takes when you ask an AI to draft an email, plan a vacation, or role-play as a friend? Google just shed some light: The company calculated the energy, water, and carbon emissions tied to text prompts on its Gemini apps.

The energy use for the median text prompt is far less than some previous estimates: Google found that it uses just 0.24 watt-hours, or the equivalent of watching TV for less than nine seconds. Other models might be wildly different: One estimate of OpenAI’s GPT-5 model suggested that it might use as much as 40 watt-hours per prompt. (That estimate, unlike Google’s calculations, wasn’t based on internal data.)

Google laid out a detailed methodology for measuring the environmental impact of getting answers from its AI. For energy, that include

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