This paper presents the ML$.$ENERGY Benchmark, a benchmark tool for measuring the inference energy consumption of generative AI in real-world service environments. This benchmark was developed to address energy consumption, a frequently overlooked issue when building ML systems, and is based on four core design principles. The benchmark results, published in early 2025, measure the energy consumption of 40 widely used model architectures, demonstrating the impact of ML design choices on energy consumption and the energy savings achieved through automated optimization recommendations. The ML$.$ENERGY Benchmark is open source and can be easily applied to a variety of models and application scenarios.