ChatGPT

This very much depends on usage. A big thing is training as its a big unknown. sans training each prompt that is not generative uses like the energy of 3 to five web searches. Given you likely have to do a few searches to get the info, if it gives you a good one, from a prompt it actually seems close to even. I can't really say on generation as I have not really been able to compare its output to what it would take for someone to do it manually. Steaming video uses a fairly good amount of power. So if someone is playing with chat gpt to entertain themselves instead of streaming even low rez video it looks like its actually less energy. This does leave training as a big question mark but then again what about all the behind the scenes a search engine does to prepare for searching. things like scraping and running things through its algorithms. I have also seen some pretty decent steps by the various companies to save energy and they definately are motivated to (since as far as I know it still runs at a loss). So Im not as concerned about its power use as much as I once was and hope that hardware and software will keep on evolving and I think its possible it could in general take less energy than an alternative. Now that does not speak at all to the limitations of its output.