Chilean Community Powers Human Chatbot to Expose Hidden AI Water Footprint in Drought-Stricken Region

A chatbot entirely powered by humans, not artificial intelligence? This Chilean community shows why

About 50 members of a community outside Chile's capital spent Saturday trying their best to power an entirely human-operated chatbot that could answer questions and make silly pictures on command, in a message to highlight the environmental toll of artificial intelligence data centers in the region. Organizers say the 12-hour project fielded more than 20,000 requests from around the world, with more still coming in. Asking the Quili.AI website to generate an image of a "sloth playing in the snow" didn't instantly produce an output, as ChatGPT or Google's Gemini would. Instead, someone responded in Spanish to wait a few moments and reminded the user that a human was responding. Then came a drawing about 10 minutes later: a penciled sketch of a cute and cartoonish sloth in a pile of snowballs, with its claws clutching one and about to throw it. "The goal is to highlight the hidden water footprint behind AI prompting and encourage more responsible use," said a statement from organizer Lorena Antiman of the environmental group Corporación NGEN. The answers came from a rotating crew of volunteers working on laptops in a community center in Quilicura, a municipality at the urban edge of Santiago that has become a data center hub. Asked by an Associated Press reporter for the identity of who made the sloth drawing, the website responded that it was a local youth who's helping with illustrations. The website responded quickly to questions that drew on residents' cultural knowledge, like how to make Chilean sopaipillas, a fried pastry. When they didn't know the answer, they walked around the room to see if someone else did. "Quili.AI isn't about always having an instant answer. It's about recognizing that not every question needs one," Antiman said. "When residents don't know something, they can say so, share perspective, or respond with curiosity rather than certainty." She said it's not designed to reject the "incredibly valuable" uses of AI but to think more about the impacts of so much "casual prompting" on water-stressed places like Quilicura. The backdrop behind the campaign is a debate, in Chile and elsewhere, about the heavy costs of AI usage. Data center computer chips running AI systems require huge amounts of electricity and some also use large volumes of water for cooling, with usage varying depending on location and type of equipment. Cloud computing giants Amazon, Google and Microsoft are among a number of companies that have built or planned data centers in the Santiago region. Google has argued that the Quilicura data center it switched on in 2015 is the "most energy efficient in Latin America" and has highlighted its investment in wetlands restoration and irrigation projects in the surrounding Maipo River basin. But it faced a court challenge over another project near Santiago over water usage concerns. Chile has faced a decade of severe drought, which experts say contributed to the spread of recent wildfires.

Can Humans Answer Your Questions Better Than AI? For the Next 24 Hours, You Can Find Out

Those humans are residents of Quilicura, a town in Chile's Maipo River Basin. It's one of the most water-stressed regions in the world. The Maipo River supplies water to 7 million people, including residents of Santiago, Chile's capital city. Meanwhile, Quilicura, part of the Santiago Urban Area, has one of the highest concentrations of AI data centers in the region. Those data centers use water to cool their servers. Some use more than 1 million liters of water every day. AI is, unquestionably, an intensely useful invention that has already transformed our lives in previously unimaginable ways. And it's just getting started. Just as unquestionably, creating the infrastructure needed for all that data processing is putting pressure on our planet's already-stressed natural resources. Data centers require huge amounts of electricity. They also generate high heat, and use water to cool that heat. If your grandparents remember the Dust Bowl drought of the 1930s, or if you live in one of the growing number of drought-stricken regions today, you know how serious this is. Quilicurans know it too, which is why, just for today, they are offering to answer your questions and asking you to turn to them instead of to AI. When you do, the site will tell you how much water you saved by doing so.

A chatbot entirely powered by humans, not artificial intelligence? This Chilean community shows why

Residents near Santiago, Chile, powered a human chatbot to show AI's environmental impact. The 12-hour project handled over 25,000 requests globally. This initiative aims to highlight the hidden water footprint of AI prompting. It encourages responsible AI use in water-stressed regions. Major tech companies are building data centres in the area, sparking debate over resource consumption. About 50 residents of a community outside Chile's capital spent Saturday trying their best to power an entirely human-operated chatbot that could answer questions and make silly pictures on command, in a message to highlight the environmental toll of artificial intelligence data centers in the region. Budget 2026 Live Budget 2026: Catch all the live action hereIncome Tax Slabs Live UpdatesStock Market Live Updates Organizers say the 12-hour project fielded more than 25,000 requests from around the world. Asking the Quili.AI website to generate an image of a "sloth playing in the snow" didn't instantly produce an output, as ChatGPT or Google's Gemini would. Instead, someone responded in Spanish to wait a few moments and reminded the user that a human was responding. Then came a drawing about 10 minutes later: a penciled sketch of a cute and cartoonish sloth in a pile of snowballs, with its claws clutching one and about to throw it. "The goal is to highlight the hidden water footprint behind AI prompting and encourage more responsible use," said a statement from organizer Lorena Antiman of the environmental group Corporacion NGEN. The answers came from a rotating crew of volunteers working on laptops in a community center in Quilicura, a municipality at the urban edge of Santiago that has become a data center hub. Asked by an Associated Press reporter for the identity of who made the sloth drawing, the website responded that it was a local youth who's helping with illustrations. The website responded quickly to questions that drew on residents' cultural knowledge, like how to make Chilean sopaipillas, a fried pastry. When they didn't know the answer, they walked around the room to see if someone else did. "Quili.AI isn't about always having an instant answer. It's about recognizing that not every question needs one," Antiman said. "When residents don't know something, they can say so, share perspective, or respond with curiosity rather than certainty." She said it's not designed to reject the "incredibly valuable" uses of AI but to think more about the impacts of so much "casual prompting" on water-stressed places like Quilicura. The backdrop behind the campaign is a debate, in Chile and elsewhere, about the heavy costs of AI usage. Data center computer chips running AI systems require huge amounts of electricity and some also use large volumes of water for cooling, with usage varying depending on location and type of equipment. Cloud computing giants Amazon, Google and Microsoft are among a number of companies that have built or planned data centers in the Santiago region. Google has argued that the Quilicura data center it switched on in 2015 is the "most energy efficient in Latin America" and has highlighted its investment in wetlands restoration and irrigation projects in the surrounding Maipo River basin. But it faced a court challenge over another project near Santiago over water usage concerns. Chile has faced a decade of severe drought, which experts say contributed to the spread of recent deadly wildfires.