Quili AI

Quili.ai is a campaign by Fundación Avina and Corporación Ngen that draws attention to the water costs of artificial intelligence. Quilicura, Chile, lies in the Maipo River basin, a vital source for households and agriculture, and has become a major data-center hub since the early 2010s. Those facilities use water to cool servers, adding pressure amid a severe drought expected to continue until 2040. The campaign argues that everyday AI use has consequences far from the person entering a prompt: requests for images, recipes, and advice can contribute to demand for computing infrastructure that consumes local water.

To make that hidden cost tangible, more than 40 Quilicura residents became a human chatbot for 12 hours on January 31, answering prompts themselves and making content with local artists. They handled over 25,000 prompts, with each conversation averaging 11 minutes and 4 seconds, and engaged people in 68 countries. The effort reported a global reach of 71.6 million and an overall audience of more than one billion. By replacing automated responses with residents’ time and creativity, the initiative connected remote AI users to the people and resources affected by data-center operations. Its central message is that the benefits of AI should be weighed against its environmental footprint, and that responsible use requires making those costs visible.