It can in the sense that many forms of generating power are just some form of water or steam turbine, but that's neither here nor there.

IMO, the graph is misleading anyway because the criticism of AI from that perspective was the data centers and companies using water for cooling and energy, not individuals using water on an individual prompt. I mean, Microsoft has entered a deal with a power company to restart one of the nuclear reactors on Three Mile Island in order to compensate for the expected cost in energy of their AI. Using their service is bad because it incentivizes their use of so much energy/resources.

It's like how during COVID the world massively reduced the individual usage of cars for a year and emissions barely budged. Because a single one of the largest freight ships puts out more emissions than every personal car combined annually.

This particular graph is because a lot of people freaked out over "AI draining oceans" that's why the original paper (I'll look for it when I have time, I have a exam tomorrow. Fucking higher ed man) made this graph