As artificial intelligence (AI) rapidly expands, data centers have become major consumers of water, using millions of liters daily to cool their powerful servers. This growing demand has sparked concerns about the pressure it places on already limited global water resources.
Experts estimate that every AI chatbot response consumes around 500 milliliters of clean drinking water. While the amount may appear small, it becomes alarming when multiplied by the billions of AI queries processed worldwide each day.
Research highlights that a single data center can consume at least 200 million liters of water daily, totaling nearly nine billion liters per month. Over the course of a year, this figure exceeds 100 billion liters—an amount sufficient to provide drinking water to millions of people in a large city for several months.
Data centers, which house thousands of high-performance servers, rely on water-based cooling systems to prevent overheating and maintain functionality.
However, many of the world’s largest AI facilities are situated in countries such as the United States, China, Ireland, Spain, Singapore, and the Netherlands, where water scarcity is already a pressing issue. The rising demand for water by these centers poses serious risks to agriculture, drinking water supplies, and overall sustainability.
As global temperatures climb and populations increase, diverting vast quantities of clean water to sustain AI infrastructure could intensify crises in vulnerable regions.
Environmental experts warn that unchecked water use by the technology industry may have dire consequences, including reduced access to safe drinking water for communities worldwide.
Campaigners are urging the introduction of international regulations to monitor and restrict water usage linked to AI technologies. They argue that without urgent global action, the race for technological advancement may come at the expense of human survival, worsening water scarcity and threatening food security.
