The company, xAI, has installed several dozen turbines in Memphis without proper permits, the group said, polluting a nearby community.
Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company xAI, which runs the Grok chatbot, is facing a legal challenge led by the NAACP over air pollution from its supercomputer facility in Memphis.
xAI’s South Memphis data center, near predominantly Black neighborhoods, has been operating natural-gas-burning turbines without the proper permits, the NAACP alleged in a notice of an intent to sue filed on Tuesday. Those turbines were sending noxious emissions toward local homes, said Derrick Johnson, president of the NAACP.
“We cannot afford to normalize this kind of environmental injustice, where billion-dollar companies set up polluting operations in Black neighborhoods without any permits and think they’ll get away with it,” he said.
In a statement, xAI said that it took its environmental commitments seriously, as well as its responsibility to the local community. “The temporary power generation units are operating in compliance with all applicable laws,” the company statement said.
The data center, part of Mr. Musk’s xAI artificial intelligence business, began running last year in a former manufacturing plant. It houses a supercomputer that Mr. Musk, the world’s richest man, has said would be the world’s largest supercomputer.
Before beginning operations, the company rolled in flatbed trucks loaded with gas-powered turbines to help meet its electricity needs, which rival those of 100,000 homes. The Southern Environmental Law Center, a legal nonprofit organization that is representing the NAACP, said aerial images from March showed 35 gas turbines at the site, and that the turbines were emitting significant amounts of heat.