The only AI program SZA is interested in using is the one she naturally has: “Actual Imagination.” In a series of recent Instagram interactions, the singer criticized the damaging use of artificial intelligence programs that consume vital resources to function, such as ChatGPT and Elon Musk’s chatbot, Grok.

“Ai is killing and polluting black and brown cities,” SZA wrote on Instagram on Tuesday, July 15. “None of you care cause your codependent on a machine. Have a great life.”

Later that day, SZA circled back to emphasize her warning about the dangers of prolonged and normalized everyday use of AI. “Please google how much energy and pollution it takes to run Ai .. please google the beautiful black cities like Memphis that are SUFFERING because of twitters new Ai system,” she wrote in a comment that she later re-posted to her Instagram Story.

Last year, Musk opened an AI data center in Memphis that sparked concern from the city’s community and environmental groups about its potential for pollution and excessive water usage. “This continues a legacy of billion-dollar conglomerates who think that they can do whatever they want to do, and the community is just not to be considered,” KeShaun Pearson, executive director of the nonprofit Memphis Community Against Pollution, told TIME. “They treat southwest Memphis as just a corporate watering hole where they can get water at a cheaper price and a place to dump all their residue without any real oversight or governance.”

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SZA called it out for being exactly what it is: “PLEASE JUST GOOGLE ENVIRONMENTAL RACISM.” According to the Natural Resources Defense Council, environmental racism is defined as “the intentional siting of polluting and waste facilities in communities primarily populated by African Americans, Latines, Indigenous People, Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, migrant farmworkers, and low-income workers.”

“Al doesn’t give a fuck if you live or die I promise,” she added. “THERE IS A PRICE FOR CONVENIENCE AND BLACK AND BROWN WILL PAY THE BRUNT OF IT EVERY-TIME. We won’t get it til it’s too late. Yall don’t hear me tho. Love u regardless.”

When re-sharing the comment on her Instagram Story, SZA concluded: “I really meant this and I’m deeply concerned .. pls care.”

SZA has hit out at AI users for being “codependent on a machine” – see what the singer had to say below.

Yesterday (July 16), the ‘Kill Bill’ hitmaker took to her Instagram Stories to share a screenshot of a comment she made on the social media platform earlier in the day urging her fans and followers to stop using AI due to its environmental costs.

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“Please Google how much energy and pollution it takes to run AI… Please Google the beautiful Black cities like Memphis that are SUFFERING because of Twitter’s new AI system. PLEASE JUST GOOGLE ENVIRONMENTAL RACISM,” she wrote.

“AI doesn’t give a fuck if you live or die I promise. THERE IS A PRICE FOR CONVENIENCE AND BLACK AND BROWN [COMMUNITIES] WILL PAY THE BRUNT OF IT EVERYTIME. We won’t get it til it’s too late. Y’all don’t hear me tho,” she continued.

sza bringing attention to ai ❤️ pic.twitter.com/mZe5aZREc3 — anthony ࣪𖤐.ᐟ (@szacentral) July 16, 2025

Regarding SZA’s mention of environmental racism and how Black and Brown communities will pay the price for the technology’s use, her claims are backed by the National Resources Defence Council (NRDC) and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

The NRDC reports that environmental racism is defined as the “intentional siting of polluting and waste facilities in communities primarily populated by African Americans, Latines, Indigenous People, Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, migrant farmworkers, and low-income workers.”

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Environmental racism affects communities that “are disproportionately exposed to fumes, toxic dust, ash, soot, and other pollutants from such hazardous facilities located in their midst. As a result, they face increased risks of health problems like cancer and respiratory issues.”

This was backed by the NAACP, which reports that Elon Musk’s xAI company has set up shop in Tennessee since June 2024, and has installed over 35 unpermitted gas turbines to avoid paying for electricity. These turbine have released “toxic chemicals that create smog and cancer-causing pollutants. Since xAI’s data center opened, nearby air pollution monitors in Memphis have reported harmful levels of smog in the air.”

The environmental costs of AI has also been a point of contention since the technology’s rise in recent years. MIT reported in a study that the “computational power required to train generative AI models that often have billions of parameters can demand a staggering amount of electricity, which leads to increased carbon dioxide emissions and pressures on the electric grid.”

MIT continues: “Beyond electricity demands, a great deal of water is needed to cool the hardware used for training, deploying, and fine-tuning generative AI models, which can strain municipal water supplies and disrupt local ecosystems. The increasing number of generative AI applications has also spurred demand for high-performance computing hardware, adding indirect environmental impacts from its manufacture and transport.”

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Last year, Nick Cave joined the many artists who warned of the dangers of the rise of AI in music, saying that its usage within the industry is “unbelievably disturbing” and will have a “humiliating effect” on creatives.

Earlier this year, Elton John, Coldplay, Dua Lipa, Paul McCartney, Florence Welch, Kate Bush and Robbie Williams were among those who called on the UK government to change copyright laws amid the threat from AI.

Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources.

Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content.

Artificial intelligence (AI) and cryptocurrency are among the technological advances driving up energy demand across the United States, which could result in higher energy prices for consumers.

Why It Matters

These innovative technologies are rapidly reshaping all aspects of global society, but have fueled concerns about energy usage. As technology like AI becomes more accessible and widely used, many critics are concerned about both its environmental impact and the potential to drive up energy demand and prices for Americans.

Energy consumption in the U.S. is on the rise, according to a June U.S. Energy Information Administration report. Consumption is expected to hit 4,193 billion kilowatt-hours in 2025, up from 4,097 billion kilowatt-hours in 2024, according to the report.

What To Know

An aerial view of a large Google Data Center being built in Cheshunt, England, on May 31, 2025. An aerial view of a large Google Data Center being built in Cheshunt, England, on May 31, 2025. Richard Newstead/iStock via Getty Images

Artificial Intelligence

Millions of Americans now utilize AI in their day-to-day lives, whether for work, to quickly search for information online, or generative purposes. However, studies show that the widespread use of AI may come at a cost.

A May 2024 study by the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) found that AI data centers could account for 9 percent of U.S. electricity generation by 2030. This is largely because AI searches use approximately 10 times the energy of traditional searches through engines like Google. AI-generated photographs and multimedia use even more energy.

These data centers consume a significant amount of power to process and store massive amounts of information, as well as to cool equipment to prevent it from overheating.

PJM Interconnection, a transmission organization covering parts of the East Coast and Midwest, on Tuesday announced that electricity demand is likely to continue to “rapidly” grow, driven largely by data center expansion, electrification and economic growth.

A Monitoring Analysis report from June pointed to the growing number of data centers as the “primary reason for recent and expected capacity market conditions.”

“It is misleading to assert that the capacity market results are simply just a reflection of supply and demand. The current conditions are not the result of organic load growth. The current conditions in the capacity market are almost entirely the result of large load additions from data centers, both actual historical and forecast,” the report reads.

Cryptocurrency

Cryptocurrency is also driving up energy demand. According to Energy Star, the global annual energy consumption across the market is 68 terawatt hours.

Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin require computers to solve complex mathematical problems to verify transactions, which consumes a high amount of energy, contributing to increased energy consumption. A 2021 University of Chicago study found that cryptomining could cost Americans up to $1 billion each year.

“In Upstate New York, where a quarter of US crypto mining takes place, the researchers find that electricity rates have gone up in response to rising demand. Their study demonstrates that because of bitcoin mining’s power usage, households paid an additional $165 million a year in energy costs, while businesses paid an extra $79 million,” the report reads.

AI and crypto are not the only reasons consumers are paying more for electricity; however, new technologies and societal developments could also be contributing to higher energy bills.

Work From Home

Many Americans may see their energy prices increase because they are working from home, which requires more energy for lighting and computers. A Power Wizard study released earlier in July found that remote work increases electricity prices by about 6.8 percent, or $109 more per year.

That does depend on location, though. California saw the highest percent increase at 11 percent, while Louisiana ranked the lowest at only a 4.38 percent increase in energy bills for those working from home.

Global Politics

Electricity prices are also tied to the state of global affairs, as the cost of fossil fuels can fluctuate during times of conflict. The Russia-Ukraine war, which began in 2022, has seen many countries restrict the imports of Russian oil as a form of sanction against Moscow. The conflict also exacerbated inflation, an economic challenge already faced by much of the globe.

A World Economic Forum study published in February 2023 found that the conflict nearly doubled energy costs worldwide. Conflict in the Middle East, where many countries produce oil, has also at times caused electricity prices to fluctuate. There have been concerns that simmering tensions between the U.S. and Iran could drive energy prices upward throughout the summer.

One Big Beautiful Bill Act

The Republican-backed One Big Beautiful Bill Act, signed into law by President Donald Trump, could also cause electricity prices to increase, according to some studies.

The bill amends clean energy grant programs enacted by the former President Joe Biden administration, which critics say could lead to increased electricity prices due to higher demand for fossil fuels, even as demand is already rising due to the expansion of data centers.

Energy Innovation found that by 2030, Nevada residents could see their prices increase by $300, the most of any state.

What People Are Saying

White House assistant press secretary Taylor Rogers previously told Newsweek: “Since Day One, President Trump has taken decisive steps to unleash American energy and drive oil and gas production to reduce the cost of energy. The One Big Beautiful Bill will turbocharge oil production by streamlining operations for maximum efficiency and expanding domestic production capacity, which will deliver further relief to American families and businesses.”

The International Energy Agency (IEA) said in an April report: “In the United States, power consumption by data centres is on course to account for almost half the growth in electricity demand between now and 2030. Driven by AI use, the US economy is set to consume more electricity in 2030 for processing data than for manufacturing all energy-intensive goods combined, including aluminium, steel, cement and chemicals.

“In advanced economies more broadly, data centres are projected to drive more than 20% of the growth in electricity demand between now and 2030, putting the power sector in those economies back on a growth footing after years of stagnating or declining demand in many of them.”

What Happens Next

The increase in electricity costs from AI centers remains a key issue that millions of Americans may face over the coming years, and one that lawmakers are already seeking to address. A bill introduced in New Jersey, for instance, would require AI data centers to be derived from renewable energy sources to avoid adding strain to the power grid.

Research has found that using AI (artificial intelligence) has major environmental implications due to its vast energy and water usage

R&B artist SZA has publicly criticised artificial intelligence, warning about its environmental impact and the disproportionate burden it places on minority communities

In a series of Instagram stories shared on Wednesday (July 16), the singer expressed concern over the energy consumption and pollution associated with AI systems such as ChatGPT and Elon Musk’s chatbot Grok.

“Please Google how much energy and pollution it takes to run AI,” she wrote in a comment shared to her Instagram story. “Please Google the beautiful Black cities like Memphis that are SUFFERING because of Twitter’s new AI system.”

She continued: “PLEASE JUST GOOGLE ENVIRONMENTAL RACISM. AI doesn’t give a f–k if you live or die I promise. THERE IS A PRICE FOR CONVENIENCE AND BLACK AND BROWN [people] WILL PAY THE BRUNT OF IT EVERY TIME.”

SZA also spoke out on social media one day before this, posting that “AI is killing and polluting Black and Brown cities,” and criticising what she described as the public’s dependence on AI technologies; “none of you care ‘cause [you’re] codependent on a machine. Have a great life.”

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AI will require almost twice the power needed by the Netherlands by the end of 2025, reaching 23 Gigawatts of power demand compared to the Netherlands’ 12.4 gigawatts, according to The Sustainable Agency.

Elsewhere, a 2025 report from MIT found that large-scale AI data centres consume significant amounts of electricity and water, contributing to increased carbon emissions and pressure on local power grids. Critics have also argued that these effects are often most severe in low-income and minority communities.

Grok, developed by Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company xAI, recently made a series of antisemitic remarks in response to several posts on X, calling itself “MechaHitler”. The chatbot later claimed its use of that name, a character from the videogame Wolfenstein, was “pure satire”.

SZA’s comments are not the first time artists have spoken out about AI. Earlier this year, Paul McCartney, Elton John and more than 400 artists signed a letter to “protect copyright in the age of AI”.

The concept of Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been around since the 1950s, but the technology has evolved at an accelerated pace in recent years. Ever since companies like OpenAI commercialized access to their models, generative AI has been in the hands of the global population and is being used as a part of their workflow.

While a great deal of excitement surrounds this technology, its environmental consequences, which remain difficult to quantify, cannot be ignored.

The environmental impact of AI: Energy, emissions, and water usage

Each time you use a model, perhaps by asking ChatGPT to summarize an email, the computers that perform that operation consume energy, about five times more than a basic web search, researchers say.

“But an everyday user doesn’t think too much about that,” says Noman Bashir, lead author of a 2024 paper, “The Climate and Sustainability Implications of Generative AI”, co-authored with MIT colleagues. “The ease-of-use of generative AI interfaces and the lack of information about the environmental impacts of my actions mean that, as a user, I don’t have much incentive to cut back on my use of generative AI.”

But generative AI costs are not just limited to its use; there is a long process of training the model before it is able to produce coherent results. This training happens in large data centers and requires a lot of electricity.

“What is different about generative AI is the power density it requires,” says Bashir. “Fundamentally, it is just computing, but a generative AI training cluster might consume seven or eight times more energy than a typical computing workload.”

Data centers are temperature-controlled buildings that house computing infrastructure. Big companies like Amazon have hundreds of data centers around the world.

The power required for training models like GPT-3, built by OpenAI, is hard to determine. Scientists from Google and the University of California at Berkeley estimated in 2021 that training this model alone consumed about 1,286 megawatt hours of electricity and generated around 552 tons of carbon dioxide.

But electricity isn’t the whole price of this technology, as data centers use enormous amounts of water during construction and later to cool electrical components. According to one estimate, AI-related infrastructure globally may soon consume six times more water than Denmark, a country of six million. A quarter of humanity already lacks access to clean water and sanitation, deepening the resource-eating problem of this already unsustainable growth of generative AI technology.

As Bashir explains: “Just because this is called ‘cloud computing’ doesn’t mean the hardware lives in the cloud. Data centers are present in our physical world, and because of their water usage, they have direct and indirect implications for biodiversity.”

While we have limited information on the environmental impact of data centers, it is impossible to predict how technology and applications based on AI will affect the planet. AI-generated content is already flooding our information channels. If the technology is used to generate misinformation about climate change, that would further downplay the seriousness of this problem in the eyes of the public.

So, what now? How we can make AI more sustainable

Despite the costs, there are hopes that AI can help address some of the world’s most pressing environmental emergencies. Some examples of this include mapping the destructive dredging of sand and charting emissions of a potential greenhouse gas, methane.

The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has recommended five main things to control the environmental fallout from AI:

Countries can establish standardized procedures for measuring the environmental impact of AI

Governments, with support from UNEP, can develop regulations that require companies to disclose the direct environmental consequences of AI-based products and services

Tech companies can make AI algorithms more efficient, reducing demand for energy

Countries can encourage companies to green their data centres

Countries can weave their AI-related policies into their broader environmental regulations

“The industry is on an unsustainable path, but there are ways to encourage responsible development of generative AI that supports environmental objectives,” Bashir says.

There is also speculation that quantum computing will be the future of climate technology, with the hope that it will be more efficient than traditional computers. Computers with quantum architectures use up to 600 kWh daily, approximately a thousand times less than our current supercomputers. But we’re still some time away from this technology being ready for industrial use.

Editor’s Note: The opinions expressed here by the authors are their own, not those of Impakter.com — In the Cover Photo: The original Scientific Data and Computing Center (SDCC), formerly known as the RHIC and ATLAS Computing Facility, has grown and adapted to meet the Laboratory’s needs over the course of several decades. Cover Photo Credit: US Department of Energy.