Nationwide, the fight against water-guzzling, energy-hungry data centers is growing. In the first three months of 2026 alone, communities stopped or slowed $130 billion worth of projects. Local officials have passed more than 500 measures blocking data centers. 

And increasingly, well-known stars are joining the fight. 

Data centers are powering Big Tech’s artificial intelligence (AI) technology, which is already clogging our feeds with AI slop images, music, and videos. AI presents a real threat to the creative arts and creative jobs, just as it threatens jobs in many other industries across the economy.

Whether celebrities have sought to defend their work from AI, spoken out against AI as a tool in their field, or joined local opposition against data centers to protect the communities they love, they’re adding their voices to this fight that impacts all of us.

Here are five celebrities who have opposed data centers, and what their opposition says about the wider movement against data centers.

1. Willie Nelson Shines a Spotlight on a Texas Data Center

Country music legend Willie Nelson has long been a friend to farmers. In 1985, he founded Farm Aid, an annual music festival to support family farms. Now, he’s speaking out against a new threat to farms: data centers. 

As Food & Water Watch research illustrates, data centers are gobbling up land, guzzling water, polluting air, driving up land prices and making it harder to break even as a farmer, and even threatening corn and dairy productivity. They present a very real threat to rural communities across the country that are already being squeezed by Big Ag.

In July, Nelson spoke out against a data center threatening his hometown of Abbott, Texas. Nelson wrote on social media, “The last thing we need is a loud, water-thieving, light-polluting, data center anywhere near our town (or any others for that matter).”

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Nelson is a high-profile voice in a data center opposition movement that has even pushed Texas Governor Greg Abbott, a long-time booster of the AI and data center industry, to introduce regulations and restrictions on data centers. 

2. SZA Calls Out Data Center Industry’s Environmental Injustices

R&B sensation SZA has also spoken out against data centers, specifically pointing out AI’s impact on Black and Brown communities. She’s also asked her fans to stop creating AI-generated images of her. 

“AI is killing and polluting black and brown cities,” she posted on her Instagram in July. “… please google the beautiful black cities like Memphis that are SUFFERING because of twitters new Ai system.”

In citing Memphis, SZA is referencing Elon Musk’s Colossus data centers, which are powering his xAI. Colossus 1 and 2 have been powered by dozens of unregulated gas turbines, spewing dangerous air pollution into the majority-Black Memphis neighborhood of Boxtown. Now, after years of relentless local activism, the Memphis City Council is considering a one-year moratorium on new data centers.

The xAI data centers in Memphis follow a long history of corporations siting their polluting facilities in Black, Brown, rural, and low-income communities. The data center industry is following the same playbook, and we’re seeing it from the majority-Latin community of Santa Teresa, New Mexico, to the rural former coal town of Manchester, Ohio, and beyond.

3. Robert Duvall Opposed a Project in the Data Center Capital of the U.S.

The late Robert Duvall, Oscar-winning actor of The Godfather and many other films, opposed a data center in his home county of Fauquier, Virginia. Back in February 2023, Duvall joined hundreds of fellow residents at a Warrenton Town Council meeting and spoke out against a planned 220,000-square-foot Amazon data center. 

While the Town Council voted to approve the data center after that meeting, Amazon has yet to break ground, thanks to lawsuits opposing the project. 

The town has even backtracked from its initial support of the data center. In 2025, it amended Warrenton’s zoning laws to remove data centers as permissible use in land zoned for industrial use.

This planned data center in Warrenton is just one of the hundreds of data centers in Virginia planned and operating that make the state the data center capital of the country.

After decades of offering lucrative tax breaks to data centers, Virginia leaders are now facing growing pushback. Virginians are seeing few jobs, stunning water and energy demands, disrupted quality of life, dangerous air pollution, and billions in lost tax revenue. They’re fighting back.

4. Brad Paisley Helps Defend the Nashville Zoo from a Data Center

Grammy Award-winning country music star Brad Paisley has joined the fight against a data center planned for the Nashville Zoo. The DC BLOX data center would be 69,000 square feet and just 50 yards away from the beloved Nashville Zoo. 

The data center’s potential light and noise pollution threatens the endangered species and sensitive habitats in the Zoo. In June, Paisley called on his fans and followers to sign the Zoo’s petition to stop the data center, which now has more than 590,000 signatures and the support of fellow country star Sheryl Crow.

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Even Nashville’s Mayor has joined the fight, proposing to use eminent domain to seize the land and prevent DC BLOX from moving forward. Nashville’s Metro Council authorized the use of eminent domain to purchase the land in early August, and the fight to stop this project will continue.

5. Erin Brockovich Takes on a New Polluting Industry

Erin Brockovich’s fight for accountability for polluters that poisoned a town’s water became an Oscar-nominated film starring Julia Roberts. Since helping to win a historic settlement in that case, Erin Brockovich’s name has become synonymous with exposing corporate pollution. 

Now, she’s joined the fight against data centers with an extensive reporting initiative. Community members have logged data center concerns in more than 2,300 zip codes from coast to coast.

Brockovich’s reporting initiative has gathered invaluable data about the growth of the industry — and the growth of the movement against it. Now, the vast majority of people in the United States oppose data centers in their communities. This issue crosses party, race, gender, and class. In towns and cities nationwide, people are working together to fight Big Tech’s data centers. 

The Movement Goes Beyond Big Names

These stars have lent their reach and platforms to the defining issue of our times. They’re speaking out in defense of their homes and their beloved spaces and their communities. But this movement goes well beyond any one person or group of influential people. 

If anything, the words and actions of these celebrities are an indicator of the success of our movement, which has been solidly grassroots and community-driven. 

While the voice of a star can give an issue much-needed spotlight, the wins come from everyday organizing — talking to our neighbors, attending council meetings, writing to our elected officials, and showing up in force to protect the places and people we love.