NAACP lawsuit accuses Elon Musk’s xAI of polluting Black neighborhoods near Memphis
A new lawsuit accuses Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company of illegally spewing toxic pollutants into residential neighborhoods on the border of Tennessee and Mississippi,The suit, filed on Tuesday in Mississippi federal court, alleges xAI is violating the Clean Air Act due to emissions from its makeshift power plant in Southaven, Mississippi, which powers its datacenter there,The NAACP, represented by the environmental groups Southern Environmental Law Center and Earthjustice, says xAI has been polluting areas with homes, schools and churches, including in historically Black communities, by using dozens of methane gas generators without permits,The organization is seeking to force the company to stop operating its unpermitted turbines in Southaven,“A data center should not be a potential death sentence for a community’s health,” Abre’ Conner, the director of environmental and climate justice for the NAACP, said in a statement.
“By looking to evade clear air laws to operate dirty turbines that emit pollution and known carcinogens, these companies are following a shameful, familiar pattern: asking Black and frontline communities to bear the toxic brunt of ‘innovation’.”xAI has two datacenters in the region, nicknamed “Colossus” and “Colossus II”.They are massive facilities, with the latter occupying 1m sq ft in Southaven.Colossus is located in Tennessee in Memphis’s industrial zone and a few miles from residential neighborhoods that have long dealt with harmful pollution, including Boxtown, a neighborhood that was established by formerly enslaved people after emancipation in the 19th century.The NAACP’s lawsuit alleges xAI illegally installed and operated up to 27 gas turbines, each one the size of a large bus, to power its datacenter in Southaven.
The group claims Colossus II has the capacity to emit more than 1,700 tons of harmful nitrogen oxides per year, along with toxic chemicals like formaldehyde.xAI did not respond to request for comment.Black residents still make up a large portion of the Memphis area neighborhoods, which have faced higher rates of asthma and respiratory diseases as well as a lower life expectancy than other parts of the city.Studies have likewise shown these neighborhoods have a cancer risk that is four times the national average.The NAACP is asking the court to declare that xAI violated the Clean Air Act, order the company to install the “best available control technology on the power plant” and to pay financial penalties for every day it violated federal law.
The NAACP has a similar pending lawsuit against xAI for its Colossus facility in Memphis.xAI announced the construction of its first Colossus datacenter in Memphis in 2024 to power its chatbot Grok.Shortly after, dozens of methane gas generators started to appear at that location.By the time Musk said the facility was up and running, 122 days later, there were at least 18 generators going, per aerial photographs the Southern Environmental Law Center took of the facility.By April 2025, that number had nearly doubled, photos showed.
Eventually, xAI got permits for 15 generators there.Last year, xAI began work on Colossus II in Southaven and again brought in dozens of portable gas turbines.In March, Mississippi regulators approved a permit for 41 permanent turbines in Southaven.The NAACP says xAI is illegally operating 27 generators at this location without air permits and is asking that regulators revoke the March permit.Separately, xAI is working on building another datacenter in Southaven named Macrohardrr, where it is expected to also use gas-burning turbines.
The rapid growth of xAI in Memphis and Southaven has seen fierce opposition from residents, despite support from each city’s mayor and the chamber of commerce.Community members, local politicians and environmental non-profits have held protests and public forums to speak out against the pollution they say xAI is generating.“Our right to clean air is not up for negotiation, especially when companies prove expediency not people is their priority,” said the NAACP’s Conner.The best public interest journalism relies on first-hand accounts from people in the know.If you have something to share on this subject, you can contact us confidentially using the following methods:The Guardian app has a tool to send tips about stories.
Messages are end to end encrypted and concealed within the routine activity that every Guardian mobile app performs.This prevents an observer from knowing that you are communicating with us at all, let alone what is being said.If you don’t already have the Guardian app, download it (iOS/Android) and go to the menu.Select ‘Secure Messaging’.Our guide at theguardian.
com/tips lists several ways to contact us securely, and discusses the pros and cons of each,
Snap Inc blames AI as it lays off 1,000 workers
Snapchat’s parent company plans to lay off 16% of its employees, around 1,000 people, citing “rapid advancements in artificial intelligence”, the social media company told staff on Wednesday in an internal memo. The staff reduction is part of a wave of tech industry layoffs in the past year, with many firms blaming AI for the cuts.Snap Inc’s layoffs follow demands last month from Irenic Capital Management, an activist investor whose portfolio manager wrote a letter to the Snap Inc CEO, Evan Spiegel, calling on him to reduce costs and headcount while criticizing the company’s current strategy. In Spiegel’s memo to staff, he claimed that the layoffs would move Snap towards profitability and suggested that artificial intelligence could fill the lack of human labor.“While these changes are necessary to realize Snap’s long-term potential, we believe that rapid advancements in artificial intelligence enable our teams to reduce repetitive work, increase velocity, and better support our community, partners, and advertisers,” Spiegel wrote
Amazon enters agreements for nine Australian renewable projects to power datacentres
Amazon has entered power agreements with nine new renewable projects in New South Wales and Victoria, as the technology company seeks to source renewable power for its datacentre operations in Australia.The nine deals, including one windfarm and 10 solar and battery projects, will take the amount of renewable energy Amazon is sourcing in Australia from 430MW to nearly 1GW.The power purchase agreements are contracts between energy providers and datacentre operators to meet the expected demands of their centres. Amazon has entered into agreements for more than 20 projects in Australia as it aims to reach net zero carbon emissions by 2040.These include power from Victoria’s Golden Plains 2, the largest windfarm in Australia, which began operating in 2024
MacBook Air M5 review: Apple’s best consumer laptop speeds up
Apple’s latest MacBook Air is its most powerful yet, comes with double the starting storage and is better than ever for getting work done and as the benchmark for a consumer laptop. But this year the new lower-cost MacBook Neo has muddied the waters.The Guardian’s journalism is independent. We will earn a commission if you buy something through an affiliate link. Learn more
China now the ‘good guy’ on AI as Trump takes ‘wild west’ approach, MPs told
China is now the “good guy” on AI rather than Donald Trump’s US, where the technology is being pursued in a dangerous “wild west” manner, a former UN and UK government adviser has told MPs.Prof Dame Wendy Hall, who was a member of the UN’s AI advisory board and co-wrote a review of AI for Theresa May’s government, told the House of Commons business and trade committee that China was backing multinational attempts to introduce global governance of AI, in contrast to America, which had set up a race between profit-hungry companies that relied on hype.“China is doing some amazing work in AI, and in fact, at the moment they’re acting as the good guys because the US is totally against any regulation and talk about global governance,” said Hall, who is director of the Web Science Institute at the University of Southampton. “It’s all Maga. It’s all: we’re going to win at all costs
Bosses say AI boosts productivity – workers say they’re drowning in ‘workslop’
Ken, a copywriter for a large, Miami-based cybersecurity firm, used to enjoy his job. But then the “workslop” started piling up.Workslop is an unintended consequence of the AI boom. It’s what happens when employees use AI to quickly generate work that seems polished – at least superficially – but is in fact so flawed or inaccurate that it needs to be heavily corrected, cleaned up or even completely redone after it’s passed on to colleagues.For Ken, the problem started after his company’s CEO laid off several of his colleagues and mandated that remaining workers use AI chatbots, saying it would boost their productivity
AI companies make powerful tech – but they’re also savvy marketers
Hello, and welcome to TechScape. I’m your host, Blake Montgomery, the Guardian’s US tech editor, writing to you from my happy village in Pokopia.Artificial intelligence companies make powerful products. They also make outlandish claims.Last week, Anthropic released Claude Mythos, an AI model focused on cybersecurity, which has inspired widespread thrill and panic over how capable it is said to be
Five key questions: who overruled decision to deny Mandelson security clearance?
Officials debate withholding Mandelson vetting documents from parliament
Revealed: Mandelson failed vetting but Foreign Office overruled decision
As an older man, I feel for Peter Mandelson being caught short | Letter
A decade on from Brexit, Britain still flounders without a place in the world | Letters
SNP pledges to cap bread and milk prices if it wins Scotland’s parliamentary elections