ChatGPT users' courtesy is costing OpenAI millions of dollars

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said on social media that processing various "please" and "thank you" messages costs the company "tens of millions of dollars [US]," Futurism reports.

While politely interacting with a chatbot may seem pointless, some AI architects find it useful. For example, Microsoft design manager Curtis Beavers says that proper etiquette "helps generate more useful results."

A survey conducted in late 2024 found that 67% of respondents in the US reported that they were polite when interacting with chatbots. 55% of this group said they did so “because it was the right thing to do,” and 12% said they did so to appease the algorithm in the event of an AI uprising.

Although many experts assure that the AI revolution is still a long way off, user politeness can create very real environmental consequences right now.

A Washington Post investigation, conducted in collaboration with researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, examined the effects of composing a 100-word email. They found that generating a single email requires 0.14 kilowatt-hours of electricity, enough to power 14 LED lights for an hour. Composing one email a week for a year uses 7.5 kilowatt-hours.

The data centers used to power these chatbots already consume about 2% of global energy consumption, and that figure is only set to grow.