What has FIRE been doing in the AI space? - by Tyler Tone

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Tech<br>What has FIRE been doing in the AI space?

Tyler Tone<br>Jul 01, 2026

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This is the third article in a weekly series on AI and Free Speech. You can read the first article explaining why the First Amendment is so important in the age of AI here.

In February 2024, FIRE President and CEO Greg Lukianoff took a short walk from our D.C. office to Capitol Hill to testify before the House Judiciary Committee. He delivered an important message: “the most chilling threat that the government poses in the context of emerging AI is government overreach that limits its potential as a tool for contributing to human knowledge.” A legislative panic, he warned, “could result in a small number of Americans deciding for everyone else what speech, ideas, and even questions are permitted.”

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His warning to lawmakers marked an early milestone in FIRE’s growing engagement with AI as a free speech issue — work that has since taken us before legislators and state officials, and led us to fund grants and conduct proprietary research. But before we get into that work, it’s worth asking: How did a campus free speech organization end up testifying about artificial intelligence?<br>It started with our principles. We believe knowledge grows through open inquiry, debate, and the free exchange of ideas — and for decades, FIRE defended that principle on college campuses. Longtime fans know that from 1999 to 2022, our acronym stood for Foundation for Individual Rights in Education. But we always understood our principles extended beyond the university gates, and so, in 2022, we expanded to become the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, ready to defend free speech wherever it’s threatened, including in AI.<br>The expansion saw the rapid growth of our Legislative, Research, and Litigation Departments, and a robust engagement with tech policy issues soon followed. In 2022, we launched our first legal challenge to a social media regulation. Then, in 2023, we dropped our reports on social media and AI. The next year, with Greg’s testimony to Congress, we dove headfirst into free speech’s next frontier.<br>Our state legislative efforts

The 2024 to 2026 stretch has seen literally thousands of AI-related bills introduced in state legislatures across the country. That includes 1,208 bills in 2025 alone — not even counting the bills that have been introduced at the federal level.<br>Thankfully, most of these bills don’t directly implicate First Amendment interests, but there’s been more than enough to keep FIRE’s Legislative team busy as we faced exactly the wave of activity Greg’s testimony had feared.<br>We have flown to state capitols, worked with legislators, and fought efforts to let the government decide what AI systems can say and how Americans can use them.<br>We’ll take Washington state as a snapshot to give you a sense of just how many AI-related bills we’ll see march through a state simultaneously, and the First Amendment threats which often get lost amid the rush to legislate.

How does the First Amendment apply to AI?<br>Tyler Tone<br>Jun 24

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In January of 2026, FIRE delivered testimony to Washington’s state legislature on three different bills advancing through committee at once.<br>HB 1170 belonged to a broad category of bills we’ve seen in other states regulating AI-generated images and videos. The bill mandated that developers embed AI-generated content with government-prescribed disclosures.<br>We’d seen it before. It was FIRE’s second time in front of the Washington legislature on the bill, and that is only the tip of the iceberg in terms of the nationwide landscape.<br>In fact, FIRE has intervened to oppose over 20 bills targeting AI-generated content or “synthetic media,” including proposals in states like Virginia, Texas, Arkansas, North Dakota, Maryland, Rhode Island, Vermont, Connecticut, North Carolina, and Missouri. Those bills often aim at AI-generated political content, including “deepfakes,” and many sweep far beyond fraud or defamation and burden satire, parody, commentary, journalism, and simple criticism of candidates.<br>Next, Washington’s HB 2157, an “algorithmic discrimination” bill, would have made AI developers liable if their models were used by others to engage in discrimination. Such duties incentivize AI developers to handicap their models to avoid any possibility of offering recommendations that some might deem discriminatory or simply offensive.<br>Our fears stemmed directly from our higher education roots: “FIRE has spent decades defending students and faculty from vague and overbroad anti-discrimination standards that cause institutions to suppress speech rather than risk punishment.” Overlaying that kind of legal regime on AI models, rather than relying on existing law, threatens their capability as an information tool. We’ve kept an eye on similar bills, including a bill in Texas the previous year. We warned lawmakers...