The fight over who gets poisoned so Silicon Valley can train smarter chatbots has landed in federal court.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The NAACP is suing Elon Musk\u2019s xAI for allegedly skirting permits and running gas turbines that are spewing formaldehyde and smog\u2011forming pollution into Black communities already scoring failing grades for air quality.<\/p>\n
To keep its \u201cColossus\u201d data centers running, xAI is burning enough methane to power a small city<\/a> \u2014 and, according to the lawsuit from the NAACP, doing it through a web of gas turbines that advocates say are currently operating without permits and have been for months.<\/p>\n The lawsuit, filed Tuesday in a federal court in Mississippi, alleges that between August and December 2025, xAI and its subsidiary MZX Tech LLC, installed and operated 27 gas turbines in Southaven, Mississippi \u2014 a suburb of Memphis, Tennessee \u2014 \u201cwithout an air permit or regard for the health and safety of people living nearby.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n The plant feeds xAI\u2019s Colossus 2 data center complex serving the Memphis area, where Black residents have been organizing for years to rein in a growing cluster of data facilities they say are threatening their health.<\/p>\n \u201cA data center should not be a potential death sentence for a community\u2019s health,\u201d said Abre\u2019 Conner, NAACP director of environmental and climate justice. \u201cOur homes, churches, and playgrounds will not be sacrifice zones for Big Tech\u2019s convenience.\u201d<\/p>\n