A new Liquid Death marketing campaign fronted by former NFL player Jason Kelce is drawing attention to public opposition to AI data centres, using bathroom humour to make its point. Launched on a Tuesday, the campaign asks members of the public to bottle their urine in a collectible mug and post it to the AI data centre of their choice.
Kelce, who co-owns Garage Beer and co-hosts the New Heights podcast with his brother Travis, is an unlikely face for the stunt. The now-viral advert opens with Kelce using the bathroom before cutting to him holding a jar of yellow liquid and issuing a call to action, singing, “Let’s pee on computers together and save humanity.” The visual echoes the well-known 1970s Coca-Cola advert featuring people harmonising on a sunny hillside.
Beneath the comedic framing, the campaign carries a wider message about the pressure that data centres place on local communities, natural resources and infrastructure.
What AI data centres actually do
AI data centres are large facilities that house the vast amount of hardware required to train and run artificial intelligence models. These warehouses are stocked with high-performance graphics processing units, which supply the computing power behind AI tasks such as research and video production.
There are currently nearly 4,000 AI data centres across the United States. A database created by environmental activist Erin Brockovich maps their locations, with the majority being built in rural areas.
The strain on water and power
Keeping data centres running requires substantial volumes of fresh water to cool servers and prevent them from overheating. Evaporative cooling towers rely on water to absorb the heat generated by the hardware.
A 2025 report from the Environmental and Energy Study Institute states that large data centres can consume up to 5 million gallons of water each day, equivalent to the amount used by a town of between 10,000 and 50,000 people. As large quantities of potable water are redirected, residents living nearby have raised concerns about the impact on daily life, farming and basic household needs, as well as questions over who will ultimately bear the resulting utility bills.
Electricity demand is a further concern. A recently announced facility from OpenAI and Nvidia, planned for Pike County, Ohio, is projected to require significant compute. The Ports-Pike Technology Campus is expected to consume roughly 8 gigawatts of power, equivalent to the annual energy use of 6 million average US households.
