When Beverly Morris retired in 2016, she thought she had found her dream home - a peaceful stretch of rural Georgia, surrounded by trees and quiet.

Today, it's anything but.

Just 400 yards (366m) from her front porch in Fayette County sits a large, windowless building filled with servers, cables, and blinking lights.

It's a data centre - one of many popping up across small-town America, and around the globe, to power everything from online banking to artificial intelligence tools like ChatGPT.

"I can't live in my home with half of my home functioning and no water," Ms Morris says. "I can't drink the water."