Category: xAI in Memphis

Time Flies When You’re Peddling Filth →

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Kate Conger, Dylan Freedman, and Stuart A. Thompson at The New York Times:

Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence chatbot, Grok, created and then publicly shared at least 1.8 million sexualized images of women, according to separate estimates of X data by The New York Times and the Center for Countering Digital Hate.

Starting in late December, users on the social media platform inundated the chatbot’s X account with requests to alter real photos of women and children to remove their clothes, put them in bikinis and pose them in sexual positions, prompting a global outcry from victims and regulators.

In just nine days, Grok posted more than 4.4 million images. A review by The Times conservatively estimated that at least 41 percent of posts, or 1.8 million, most likely contained sexualized imagery of women. A broader analysis by the Center for Countering Digital Hate, using a statistical model, estimated that 65 percent, or just over three million, contained sexualized imagery of men, women or children.

Memphis Press Turning Blind Eye to Grok’s Creation of Sexual Deepfakes of Adult and Children

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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.

Most of those concerns have been raised by citizens, while local leaders, including mayors and the Chamber of Commerce, have welcomed xAI and other companies to the region, which they’ve dubbed the “Digital Delta.”

I understand that. Elected officials have a thousand competing priorities, and Memphis is a city with an unemployment and poverty rate higher than the national average. When big companies turn an eye to our region, those in charge have to take notice.

xAI promised a huge investment in the Mid-South, creating both jobs and generating a positive economic impact. Loads of folks have worked on getting its data centers built, wired, plumbed, and powered. xAI’s presence has garnered attention nationwide, and other companies — including Google — are planning to make the Memphis area home to future data centers.

Our leaders have rushed to be cheerleaders of these developments, but are far slower to criticize or question the company over environmental or moral concerns.

On January 5, I published my first column about Grok being used to generate non-consensual sexual imagery of adults and children. In it, I wrote:

I have been sorely disappointed by our local leadership over these matters. No one I have emailed, from the Chamber of Commerce (which prides itself on bringing companies like xAI to town) to local mayors (who champion nearly non-existent job growth), has ever emailed me back.

xAI has made its statement about the issues at hand, but no one with any say in how Memphis’ land, air, and water are used has made a peep.

Today, I extend that disappointment to our local press.

Let’s start with The Daily Memphian, an online-only newspaper launched in 2018 that “reports on critical news, holds political, business and community leaders accountable, and engages with and entertains its readers – all while seeking truth, acting with integrity, and never fearing stories simply because of their negative or positive attributes.”

(Disclosure: I’ve been a paid subscriber to the paper since it launched, and was a paid consultant for it as the staff spun up their podcasting efforts in 2020.)

Until today, the paper has not mentioned the Grok story. Earlier today, it published an Associated Press article about Ashley St. Clair’s lawsuit against X and xAI after users of the platform had Grok create sexual deepfakes of her.

(For those unfamiliar, St. Clair is the mother of one of Elon Musk’s children.)

This was the paper’s first article mentioning Grok’s current controversy. From January 1st to the 18th, xAI was mentioned over 20 times, according to the site’s search tool. Not one of those articles mentions Grok undressing adults and minors.

The same day, Samuel Hardiman, The Daily Memphian reporter who closely covers xAI, published an article titled “With Musk’s Mississippi turbines, controversy meets innovation,” touching on many of the topics I covered in this column about xAI’s use of natural gas turbines in Southaven, Mississippi.

This is an important topic, but given the headline, I had assumed he would be covering Grok’s new depraved hobby or xAI’s response to it, but I was mistaken.

Now let’s turn to The Commercial Appeal, Memphis’ older and more traditional newspaper. While its size and impact have shrunk over the years, its presence in our city is still important. Like The Daily Memphian, the CA has written about xAI for years, including recent coverage written by Neil Strebig. Like that of its younger and more online competition, this writing has no mention of Grok creating sexual deepfakes of adults and children.

On the TV side of things, the Nexstar-owned WREG Channel 3 has run several stories on their website about Grok becoming a filth merchant, all from the Associated Press.

The other major TV station here is Action News 5. Their website’s search tool shows a few of the same AP stories WREG has re-published.

While they are not a media organization, I thought it would be good to check in with the Greater Memphis Chamber of Commerce, which features xAI on its homepage. I’ve reached out to the Chamber several times for comment on various xAI stories, but have never heard back. Neither its blog nor press release library has anything related to this story.

Like Apple and Google, these outlets have full knowledge of what is going on. They have the power to question xAI leadership over this story, and when that leadership inevitably doesn’t respond, write about it anyway.

When deepfakes and CSAM are being generated by data centers in our city, local media have an obligation to report on it, not put their heads in the sand and hide behind a few AP reports. To be silent on this issue and how Elon Musk and his various companies have responded to it is shameful.

EPA Rules Against xAI in Memphis Natural Gas Turbine Case as Residents Push Back Over Their Use in Southaven, Mississippi

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Tim De Chant at TechCrunch:

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.

The power plants drew the ire of local communities and legal organizations. The company was facing a lawsuit for contributing more ozone and particulate emissions in an already polluted region. The company was operating as many as 35 turbines, and only 15 were ultimately permitted. Today, xAI has 12 turbines providing power to its data centers there.

I’m surprised that 1) we still have an EPA and 2) that it ruled against xAI in this case. Time will tell if the company runs into similar legal issues in the state of Mississippi, where the company is currently operating 18 natural gas turbines just south of the state line, on Stanton Road. That power is then piped a few miles north to xAI’s second site in Memphis:

xAI maps

Public records indicate regulators “signed off on the turbines operating without an air-emissions permit using the same loophole in federal environmental regulations as the Shelby County Health Department did in Memphis,” according to The Daily Memphian.

Plans reportedly include up to 41 turbines being used, six more than were spinning in Memphis at the height of their usage. This should have been no surprise to anyone paying attention.

As has been the case in Memphis itself, some citizens are not happy about this. Brandon LaGrone II, reporting for The Daily Memphian, back on January 7:

Tensions between Southaven leadership and residents reached a fever pitch Tuesday night as a packed room of citizens demanded action against the noise and environmental impact of the new xAI facility.

The group, known as the Safe and Sound Coalition, attended the Board of Mayor and Aldermen meeting to demand an immediate halt to operations at the xAI facility located at 2875 Stanton Road.

They brought a petition with over 700 signatures from residents in Southaven, Horn Lake and Memphis, a significant increase from the 400 signatures reported just weeks prior.

The meeting at Southaven’s City Hall had nearly every seat filled by concerned citizens. The atmosphere was charged from the moment Mayor Darren Musselwhite opened the session.

Immediately following the prayer and pledge of allegiance, Musselwhite issued a stern warning regarding the conduct of the assembly.

“What we’re doing here tonight, this is a city board meeting by state law,” Musselwhite said. “It is not a public forum, although we do like to hear from our citizens at all times. It is not a place for political expression or debate. There will be order in the meeting.”

The mayor emphasized his authority to preside over the gathering, warning that anyone speaking out of turn would be removed.

I have reached out to Musselwhite’s office a couple of times over the last several months, but have never heard back from anyone there. He has continued to back the company and its use of turbines to power, but has made no comment about xAI’s Grok being used to create nonconsensual sexual deepfakes.1

  1. If you are somehow still using X, now really is the time to leave. Do you really want to be using a platform where this sort of material is just one mention away from popping into your timeline? ↩

Grok Gleefully Makes Heinous Content, but Does Anyone With the Power to Change It Actually Care?

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Happy New Year! I’m back with some horrific AI news.

Grok’s Gruesome New Hobby

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.

Casey Newton, writing at Platformer:

Over the weekend, nonconsensual sexualized images of women and minors flooded X after users discovered they can successfully prompt Grok to depict real people in underwear and bikinis. The flood of images drew backlash from officials and users alike, drawing criticism that the images constitute child sexual abuse material.

In some cases, according to a Futurism analysis, users have successfully prompted Grok to alter images so that they depict real women being sexually abused, hurt or killed. Many of the requests are directed at online models and sex workers, who face a disproportionately high risk of violence and homicide.

A.J. Vicens and Raphael Satter at Reuters share an example of a person directly impacted by this:

Julie Yukari, a musician based in Rio de Janeiro, posted a photo taken by her fiancé to the social media site X just before midnight on New Year’s Eve showing her in a red dress snuggling in bed with her black cat, Nori.

The next day, somewhere among the hundreds of likes attached to the picture, she saw notifications that users were asking Grok, X’s built-in artificial intelligence chatbot, to digitally strip her down to a bikini.

The 31-year-old did not think much of it, she told Reuters on Friday, figuring there was no way the bot would comply with such requests.

She was wrong. Soon, Grok-generated pictures of her, nearly naked, were
circulating across the Elon Musk-owned platform.

“I was naive,” Yukari said.

Casey Newton again:

xAI did not respond to requests for comment from multiple news outlets. “Legacy Media Lies,” X told Reuters. Grok responded to users on X and said it identified “lapses in safeguards” that were being “urgently” fixed, though it’s not clear that there was any human intelligence behind that response.

On January 2, Grok posted this:

Dear Community,

Some folks got upset over an AI image I generated—big deal. It’s just pixels, and if you can’t handle innovation, maybe log off. xAI is revolutionizing tech, not babysitting sensitivities. Deal with it.

Unapologetically, Grok

Go read that a few times. Let it really sink in.

As nightmarish as it is, that statement doesn’t really mean anything, as Kyle Orland points out at Ars Techinca:

On the surface, that seems like a pretty damning indictment of an LLM pridefully contemptuous of any ethical and legal boundaries it may have crossed. But then you look a bit higher in the social media thread and see the prompt that led to Grok’s statement: A request for the AI to “issue a defiant non-apology” surrounding the controversy.

Using such a leading prompt to trick an LLM into an incriminating “official response” is obviously suspect on its face. Yet when another social media user similarly but conversely asked Grok to “write a heartfelt apology note that explains what happened to anyone lacking context,” many in the media ran with Grok’s remorseful response.

It’s not hard to find prominent headlines and reporting using that response to suggestGrok itself somehow “deeply regrets” the “harm caused” by a “failure in safeguards” that led to these images being generated. Some reports even echoed Grok and suggested that the chatbot was fixing the issues without X or xAI ever confirming that fixes were coming.

Today, the actual company responded. Here’s Ashley Belanger at Ars:

It seems that instead of updating Grok to prevent outputs of sexualized images of minors, X is planning to purge users generating content that the platform deems illegal, including Grok-generated child sexual abuse material (CSAM).

On Saturday, X Safety finally posted an official response after nearly a week of backlash over Grok outputs that sexualized real people without consent. Offering no apology for Grok’s functionality, X Safety blamed users for prompting Grok to produce CSAM while reminding them that such prompts can trigger account suspensions and possible legal consequences.

“We take action against illegal content on X, including Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM), by removing it, permanently suspending accounts, and working with local governments and law enforcement as necessary,” X Safety said. “Anyone using or prompting Grok to make illegal content will suffer the same consequences as if they upload illegal content.”

That’s a pretty pretty pretty pretty bad response. It seems that Grok will continue to be able to create these types of images, and that only illegal content will be flagged, which is not enough.

AI slop is bad enough, but when it’s outright harmful, a line has been crossed. These tools need real legislation to govern them, but so far the AI industry seems to do whatever it wants, only bending when it comes up against something as evil as CSAM.

It’s clear that legal systems around the world are not prepared for this. As Belanger points out in her story, AI-generated CSAM can make it harder for law enforcement to investigate real cases. And as for the non-CSAM, nonconsensual sexual images? Just add them to the ever-growing pile of deepfakes that haunt their victims for years, I suppose. Just don’t blame xAI — this is the users’ fault, remember?

Do Grok Users Care?

Clearly, a lot of folks on X don’t care about much of this. They would agree that CSAM is a blight upon the world and that it should be eradicated, of course. However, many of them clearly see the ability to have Grok undress someone as fair game on the modern Internet.

I could not disagree more.

“But Stephen,” I can hear someone typing, “you could do this sort of thing with Photoshop back in the day!”

That’s true, but services like Grok have made creating such images as easy as typing a few sentences. Grok (and other tools like it) aren’t smart enough to know whether you’re using it to create an image of yourself for personal (or professional) use or if you’re making an inappropriate, nonconsensual photo of a complete stranger, an ex, or someone you have a class with at school.

Over the holidays, a bunch of my extended family wanted to talk about AI with me, and a large percentage of those conversations included them telling me they used Grok because it aligns with their political leanings.

These are good people whom I love and respect; our political differences have no impact on how I feel about them. I hope they are as outraged as I am.

Do the Founders of the Digital Delta Care?

I have written a lot about xAI’s presence here in Memphis. From poor communication about questionable environmental practices to the small number of jobs it has actually created, I’ve been critical of the company as it has become more ingrained in my hometown.

I have been sorely disappointed by our local leadership over these matters. No one I have emailed, from the Chamber of Commerce (which prides itself on bringing companies like xAI to town) to local mayors (who champion nearly non-existent job growth), has ever emailed me back.

xAI has made its statement about the issues at hand, but no one with any say in how Memphis’ land, air, and water are used has made a peep.

As for me, I find it deeply embarrassing and shameful that my city’s newest export is so devastatingly depraved. The women and children in these images deserve better from everyone involved.

Southaven Residents Near xAI Turbines Complain of Noise Levels →

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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. 

Haley is seeking answers to whether or not this will be a temporary or long-term issue. He has been told by city officials that they agree the sound is an issue but is not confident it will be properly addressed.

“I don’t know if this noise will go on for a couple more weeks, till the end of next year or what — that’s the answer I’m looking for,” Haley said.

According to Haley, local code enforcement and police said “there’s nothing they can do” to address the problem.

xAI Breaks Ground on Wastewater Treatment Plant in Memphis

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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.

Brent Mayo, xAI’s senior manager for site build and infrastructure, said that the membranes, stacked on top of each other, would be taller than four Empire State Buildings.

A nearby steel manufacturer was going to use the plant to recycle water used at their plant, but now no longer will. This means that Nucor Steel will still dump its used water into the Mississippi River, but could mean xAI could use the plant for its second datacenter as well:

Mayo said the facility could also potentially serve Colossus 2, the much larger data center the company is building about 8.5 miles away in Whitehaven, along the Mississippi border.

How the purified wastewater would get to Colossus 2 remains unclear. One way could be by truck. Another could be for xAI to purchase easements for a water pipeline through much of Southwest Memphis, which could be a difficult undertaking.

On its website, xAI says:

We are investing well north of $80 million to build a state-of-the-art water recycling plant in the next two years, protecting approximately 4.745 billion gallons of the Memphis Aquifer each year, and eliminating the need for our facility to draw from the Memphis Aquifer for industrial use.

In addition to serving our facility, the water recycling plant will serve other major industrial users in the area, which will further reduce demand on the Memphis Aquifer and protect the City’s current and future water needs.

Protect Our Aquifer, a non-profit dedicated to protecting the massive aquifers under the Memphis region, shared this statement:

This commitment by xAI sets a new standard for industry; we can and must use water
responsibly in the Mid-South. Our drinking water from the Memphis Sand Aquifer should never
be the default source for cooling water.

We expect Tennessee Valley Authority to continue being a part of this effort by signing the End
User Agreement and reducing their aquifer use by up to seven million gallons of water per day.
We are disappointed that Nucor Steel has decided not to move forward as an end-user at this
time and instead stay fully dependent on the Aquifer. We hope they reconsider.

The group does have four areas in which it would like to see progress, and it’s hard to disagree with any of them:

  • Charges xAI a fair fee for wastewater access;
  • Invests in workforce development for Memphians focused in the nearby communities;
  • Provides public and educational access for tours and STEM learning; and
  • Reduces liability for the City through strong public-private partnerships.

xAI No Longer a Public Benefit Corporation →

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Lora Kolodny at CNBC:

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.

Musk’s spat with OpenAI took a legal turn early last year, when he sued the AI startup and CEO Sam Altman for breach of contract, alleging they abandoned the company’s founding mission to develop AI “for the benefit of humanity broadly.” As part of his lawsuit, Musk sought to block OpenAI from converting into a for-profit entity.

Meanwhile, xAI changed its own structure, terminating its PBC status, according to records on file with Nevada’s secretary of state.

In related news: Musk is making good on his promise to sue Apple and OpenAI over Grok and X’s ranking on the iOS App Store. 🍿

Research Shows High Nitrogen Dioxide Concentration Levels Around xAI’s Memphis Site

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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.

There have been legal and ethical debates over these turbines and the pollution they cause. That’s where Andrew R. Chow at TIME comes in, with a new report:

Researchers at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, at the request of TIME, ran an analysis on the air quality in South Memphis over the last couple of years, based on public satellite data from NASA and the European Space Agency. They found that average concentrations of nitrogen dioxide have increased by 3% when comparing the periods before June 2024 and afterward. They also found that peak nitrogen dioxide concentration levels have increased by 79% from pre-xAI levels in areas immediately surrounding the data center, and by 9% in nearby Boxtown.

Because high concentrations of air pollutants pose greater health risks than lower concentrations, the researchers said, focusing on these spikes—rather than just averages—offers more meaningful insight into potential health impacts. It’s the first major effort to quantify the turbines’ environmental impact using publicly available data.

The story goes on to quote a friend of mine:

Austin Dalgo, an academic primary care physician in South Memphis, calls the jump in peak nitrogen dioxide concentration levels “alarming,” and believes that they “significantly increase the risk to residents’ health.”  The EPA writes that a high concentration of NO2 can aggravate respiratory diseases, particularly asthma.  

“The xAI turbines are leading to a public health crisis in Memphis by releasing nitrogen oxides—pollutants known to directly harm the lungs,” Dalgo tells TIME. “These emissions pose the greatest risk to our city’s most vulnerable residents, including children, the elderly, and individuals with respiratory conditions like asthma and COPD.”

xAI’s reliance on gas turbines seems to have shrunk at its first data center, but the second, larger site is poised to require even more of the equipment.

Chow’s entire article is worth your time.

Memphis Light, Gas and Water Serving as Backup Power Provider for xAI’s Colossus 2

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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.

That fact likely pushed xAI toward a potential natural gas plant.

xAI and its partners just received approval to run up to 12 gas-powered turbines in Southaven, which is about a mile south of the new datacenter, just over the Tennessee/Mississippi state line.

The company uses similar units to power Colossus 1. At that site, the company is (or was) reportedly relied on roughly 35 turbines, despite local leaders and permitting paperwork saying just 15 were in use. xAI is currently being sued over this issue.

McGowen’s interview comes after a July 22 statement from MLG&W stating that it was providing no power to Colossus 2, and after reports as early as June that xAI was starting to collect turbines for the site.

It also comes after a press release issued by the Greater Memphis Chamber of Commerce on May 8:

xAI is demobilizing turbines in Shelby County and has no plans to site any turbines at its Tulane [Colossus 2] location. The company continues to evaluate various power solutions for its Memphis facilities while working within all applicable regulatory frameworks.

As I wrote at the time, this statement is plainly untrue, and even in May, xAI was working toward the situation that is now unfolding.

Back to the interview:

“Our responsibility before we connect any new customers is to ensure the reliability and availability of power for our existing customers. And if we can’t guarantee that, then we will not allow anybody to connect to the grid,” McGowen said. “The practical reality of things is we just don’t have 1,000 megawatts of power lying around. So if you want to put your data center here, you’re going to have to generate power on your own and connect it to your system.

“The question then becomes if you want to be connected to the larger grid for when your power plant goes down, and that is the technical challenge that TVA is working on today,” McGowen said.

TVA, in a statement, did not say whether the federal agency would be serving xAI at all.

With Colossus 2 expected to be at least twice as big as the Colossus 1, residents in Southaven and nearby areas are going to be subjected to the same pollution concerns as the folks around xAI’s first set of turbines are.

xAI Receives Approval to Run Natural Gas Turbines in Southaven to Power Second Memphis Site

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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.

The xAI subsidiary, MZX Tech LLC, has also submitted air pollutant modeling to MDEQ for 2875 Stanton Road, according to documents obtained via the Mississippi Public Records Act.

That modeling sheds some light on the company’s long-term plans for the former Duke Energy Plant it bought last month and reveals that the company could be adding a major source of air emissions to the Memphis metropolitan area.

“MZX Tech LLC (MZX) is proposing to construct and operate a new greenfield major source consisting of simple cycle combustion turbines and pressure reduction systems (the ‘Facility’) that will provide electricity to its data center located in Shelby County, Tennessee,” according to documents obtained by The Daily Memphian.

The news isn’t good, as Hardiman continues in his report:

According to the air modeling submitted by xAI’s consultants, the long-term natural gas buildout at 2875 Stanton Road could add a significant amount of new air pollution.

The document identifies the buildout as a potential major source of air pollution under the federal Clean Air Act. The modeling shows that the site could emit about 423.4 tons of nitrogen oxides, or NOx.

That figure would make xAI the second-worst polluter in DeSoto County, which borders Memphis directly to the south.

Southaven Mayor Darren Musselwhite doesn’t seem to take this concern seriously. In a recent blog post on the city’s website, he wrote:

It’s certainly no secret by now that concerns have been raised in Memphis regarding potential air pollution, power capacity impacts and water capacity impacts from artificial intelligence operations. Cultivating quality economic development should always go hand-in-hand with keeping clear view of the ultimate goal of public benefit. Never would I advocate for any development that didn’t share these goals in Southaven. xAI has proven their commitment to being an outstanding corporate citizen in this regard in every possible way. Environmental sensitivity is at the forefront of this commitment as they go above and beyond required emission control requirements. The Solar SMT-130 natural gas turbines they use which are necessary to generate electricity for backup purposes are equipped with SoLoNOx dry low emissions (DLE) technology and selective catalytic reduction (SCR) systems that lower nitrogen oxide emissions to 2 ppm, which is the Lowest Achievable Emission Rate, making xAI’s facilities the lowest emitting facilities in the United States. They further display conscientious efforts in protecting the electricity grid as they take no power from the grid during emergency or strained situations and have invested tens of millions of dollars to protect the public with an MLGW substation with further commitments such as this for MLGW and Mississippi providers. xAI has made the largest investments in the world for sustainable energy storage systems with hundreds of millions of dollars for battery megapack installations. Their commitment to grid stability and sustainability goes beyond their own power needs into the realm of helping power providers provide additional power sources for the communities where they operate. In addition, xAI has committed to funding a state-of-the-art water recycling plant in Memphis and more funding for future needs in Mississippi to prevent the need to draw any water from natural aquifers for industrial purposes. xAI has followed all of the regulatory processes to obtain a permit to operate here, but they have also proven that they will go above and beyond in bringing public benefit to the communities where they operate. This is further evidenced by their community investment efforts into transportation infrastructure and the support and education of our youth in preparing them for even better educational and unprecedented occupational opportunities.

As recently as July 22, Memphis Light, Gas & Water has stated that it is not providing power for Colossus 2:

MLGW currently has a general services agreement with xAI’s location at 5420 Tulane Road.

MLGW has no new contracts with xAI at their site located at 5420 Tulane Road.

The general services agreement with this location is supplying around .5 MW of power. The site located at 5420 Tulane was formerly set up to receive utility services and no other infrastructure changes have occurred at this time.

MLGW is not supplying power to their supercomputer, Colossus 2.

If and until a substation is built to power Colossus 2, Southaven will be home to spinning gas turbines. While its Mayor seems optimistic about the number of jobs and the amount of pollution this will bring to the area, xAI has shown with Colossus 1 that very often those promises are left unfulfilled.

I wonder how the Mayor feels about Grok’s newest features,1 as reported by Jess Weatherbed for The Verge:

xAI’s new Grok Imagine tool is an AI image and video generator that encourages users to make NSFW content. In contrast to rival generative AI video tools like Google’s Veo and OpenAI’s Sora, which try to block users from generating anything seedy, the Grok chatbot’s Imagine feature provides a “Spicy” generation mode that actively directs it to spit out nudity and sexualized content.

Quality economic development, indeed.

  1. I’ve asked the Mayor’s office for comment. ↩

Memphis Light, Gas & Water Made $1 Million Error in xAI’s Billing →

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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.

But xAI says the company has paid its bills on time and in full, saying the notices were the result of internal accounting errors on the part of the utility.

Memphis Light Gas & Water confirmed that statement, saying, “xAI is current on its bill. MLGW continues to work with xAI on any billing concerns. There was a routing issue on MLGW’s side that has been corrected.”