Elon Musk's xAI, which merged with SpaceX last week, is facing increased pressure from environmental and civil rights groups over pollution concerns, this time at the company's facility in Southaven, Mississippi.
On Friday, the Southern Environmental Law Center and Earthjustice, on behalf of the NAACP, sent a notice of intent to sue xAI and subsidiary MZ Tech LLC, saying the company's use of dozens of natural gas-burning turbines requires a federal permit, violates the Clean Air Act and harms nearby communities.
Pollution from the turbines, which xAI has also used in Memphis, Tennessee, for its Colossus 1 and Colossus 2 data centers, has been a major source of local contention for more than a year.
Plans for a third data center in Southaven, located about 20 miles from Memphis, were announced early this year, when Mississippi Republican Governor Tate Reeves said he expected the project to create "hundreds of permanent jobs throughout DeSoto County."
Launched by Musk in 2023, xAI is trying to compete with OpenAI, Anthropic and Google in the booming generative AI market. On Feb. 2, Musk said SpaceX, his rocket maker and defense contractor, acquired xAI in a deal that valued the combined entity at $1.25 trillion.
Musk is banking on the area in and around Memphis as the foundation of his AI ambitions, and he's been flouting environmental rules in order to develop as quickly as possible. Musk's social network X, formerly Twitter, is also owned by xAI, which created the Grok AI chatbot and image generator.
XAI is currently under a myriad of government investigations in Europe, Asia and the U.S. after Grok enabled users to easily create and share deepfake porn, including explicit imagery depicting child sexual abuse.
Last year, residents in the majority-Black community of Boxtown in South Memphis testified at public hearings about a stench in the air, and the impact of worsening smog on their health caused by xAI's use of natural gas turbines. Research by scientists at the University of Tennessee also found that xAI's turbine use added to air pollution woes in the area.