At the end of December, stories began to break about Grok being used by X users to generate non-consensual sexual imagery of people, including children.
I’ve been writing about xAI for over a year, as the company has built two massive data centers here in my hometown of Memphis, Tennessee. There have been concerns about the natural gas turbines powering the data centers and the amount of water xAI was using to keep its hardware cool.
Elon Musk’s xAI has been illegally operating dozens of natural gas turbines to power its Colossus data centers in Tennessee, the Environmental Protection Agency ruled Thursday. The AI company has argued that because the turbines were being used on a temporary basis, they were exempt from regulations. The EPA disagreed and issued its final rule on the matter, which has been in the works for over a year, declaring that xAI was in violation.
Happy New Year! I’m back with some horrific AI news.
Elissa Welle at The Verge:
xAI’s Grok is removing clothing from pictures of people without their consent following this week’s rollout of a feature that allows X users to instantly edit any image using the bot without needing the original poster’s permission. Not only does the original poster not get notified if their picture was edited, but Grok appears to have few guardrails in place for preventing anything short of full explicit nudity. In the last few days, X has been flooded with imagery of women and children appearing pregnant, skirtless, wearing a bikini, or in other sexualized situations. World leaders and celebrities, too, have had their likenesses used in images generated by Grok.
Kailynn Johnson, writing for The Memphis Flyer, about the turbines in Southaven, Mississippi that are powering xAI’s second datacenter site in Memphis:
In a YouTube reel, a resident named Jason Haley showed that the noise from the turbines caused his decibel reader to fluctuate from the 40s to the 60s when used inside. Haley went outside, to where the reader reached the 70s.
“Even when [the turbines] are not at peak loudness it’s [a] constant high-pitched noise that just doesn’t end,” Haley said.
For months, the city of Memphis, xAI, and partners have been planning a wastewater plant to provide water for cooling the company’s first supercomputer in Memphis. Last week, ground was broken on the site, as reported by Samuel Hardiman at The Daily Memphian:
The plant will take wastewater treated at the City of Memphis’ nearby TE Maxson’s Wastewater Treatment Plant and push it through technology known as ceramic membranes. Those membranes — thousands of them — will filter contaminants out of the water and make it usable as an industrial coolant. It will then cool the data center and the TVA Allen Combined Cycle Plant.
After months of reporting and rumors, Google made its investment in West Memphis official today. Here’s The Daily Memphian’s Dima Amro:
Google’s new data center in West Memphis will cost $4 billion and take 18 to 24 months to complete, officials said Thursday, Oct. 2.
The data center will host cloud and artificial intelligence infrastructure, Ruth Porat, president and chief investment officer of Google, announced during a groundbreaking ceremony at the site in Crittenden County.
When Elon Musk created his artificial intelligence startup xAI in 2023, he incorporated it as a Nevada public benefit corporation, making a formal commitment to positively impact society and to post regular disclosures about progress on its non-financial goals.
The launch of xAI followed Musk’s split with OpenAI, which he helped start eight years earlier as a nonprofit before the AI lab went on to take billions of dollars from Microsoft en route to becoming a massive business.
If you’ve been keeping up with my writing about xAI in Memphis, you’ll know that the company is relying on natural gas turbines to generate power to keep Grok up and running. Those turbines have been at the center of national coverage, and the issue isn’t going away, with xAI and its partners set to use turbines to power the company’s new data center, set to come online at any point.
MLGW CEO Doug McGowen was recently interviewed on our local PBS affiliate about the utility company’s role in xAI’s newest Memphis data center, as reported by The Daily Memphian, whose CEO interviewed McGowen:
McGowen said the company had initially discussed with MLGW a 1.1 gigawatt load for the project — or the equivalent of 33% of MLGW on a peak day. He said MLGW does not have that amount of power available, and no utility nationwide does either.
Tom Warren’s headline is incredible:
Microsoft is cautiously onboarding Grok 4 following Hitler concerns
As xAI inches toward completing Colossus 2, the company’s second Memphis data center, its plans for powering the site are coming into focus, as The Daily Memphian reports:
Last week, the company received approval from the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality to operate natural gas turbines without an air emissions permit for up to 12 months while the company works on its plans to build permanent natural gas generation at 2875 Stanton Road in Southaven.
For the second time, xAI has fallen behind on its bills to our local utility company. In February 2025, it was reported that the AI company was $400,000 behind and received several cutoff notices.
This time it seems that the error was on the side of MLG&W, per David Royer and April Thompson, reporting for WREG:
xAI’s Colossus data center in Memphis was issued a cutoff notice for a past-due bill by the local utility company in June, a month when it owed nearly $1 million for electricity, gas and water service.