💭 A ChatGPT prompt equals about 5.1 seconds of Netflix
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!https://simonwillison.net/2025/Nov/29/chatgpt-netflix

Date: December 1, 2025

A ChatGPT prompt equals about 5.1 seconds of Netflix
 In June 2025 Sam Altman claimed about ChatGPT that "the average query uses about 0.34 watt-hours". In March 2020 George Kamiya of the International Energy Agency estimated that "streaming a …
 Simon Willison’s Weblog · simonwillison.net [1]

This feels very promising for the future as we enter a world that is more and more dependent on AI that inference is so cheap. I did not understand the scale to how much cheaper inference is compared to training. As we get better with training I imagine this gets significantly better as well. I know they all claim to be profitable on inference, but scrolling through Simon's feed here you see several articles on the stark difference.

!!! note

 This post is a thought [2]. It's a short note that I make
 about someone else's content online #thoughts [3]

References:
[1]: https://simonwillison.net/2025/Nov/29/chatgpt-netflix
[2]: /thoughts/
[3]: /tags/thoughts/